


We Let Our Battles Choose Us

by HurtStiles



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - War, Anal Sex, Angry Stiles Stilinski, Angst, Begging, Bigotry & Prejudice, Butt Plugs, Consensual Sex, Consent Issues, Danger, Dark, Dirty Talk, Dominance, Explicit Sexual Content, Fights, Guilt, Hiding, Knotting, Light Bondage, M/M, Manipulative Theo, Marathon Sex, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mildly Dubious Consent, Murder, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Stiles Stilinski, Oral Sex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Overstimulation, Porn With Plot, Rimming, Rough Sex, Secret Relationship, Secrets, Self-Lubrication, Submission, Teasing, Under-negotiated Kink, Unhealthy Relationships, War, Werewolf Stiles Stilinski, Werewolves in Heat, Wet & Messy, Whump, and circumstances, because of being in heat, by necessity, dark but hopeful, good people doing dubious things, killers, not so good people doing even more dubious things, war related awfulness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-03
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-04-29 17:15:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5136008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HurtStiles/pseuds/HurtStiles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles has a lot of secrets, some of them hidden in bloody shadows, and some within his own cells. Sometimes all you can do is rush towards the brick wall in the distance at full speed and hope it won't matter anymore by the time you hit. </p><p>In a world where tensions between shifters and humans have devolved into violent, genocidal conflict under the influence of the strongly anti-were hunter party headed by Gerard and Kate Argent, the McCall pack becomes a crucial part of the resistance movement. When chimera Theo Raeken shows up with news of a secret detention and research facility performing horrible experiments on captive werewolves and churning out a whole new breed of biologically engineered soldiers, the pack have to act, no matter how dangerous it is, or how many misgivings Stiles has about Theo's motives. </p><p>When things go wrong, part of the rescue party is unable to escape and must try to hide and survive in a hostile city that's been whipped up into a fervor against them. Stiles may have an even bigger problem though, because the full moon is coming, and so is his heat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Everyone's a rager, but secretly they're saviors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rjosettes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rjosettes/gifts).



> Written for the Teen Wolf Fall Harvest. There is more I would have liked to do with this story, and I would have loved to hit a few more of the prompted kinks and categories, but unfortunately I ran out of time. I hope that the lovely person whose prompt I got it will enjoy it anyway. 
> 
> The story's title and chapter names come from the song "Glory and Gore" by Lorde, which goes well with the feeling of a lot of this fic.
> 
> Please heed all tags on this story for warnings. The sex is consensual on both sides, but there is an element of necessity to it initially, and there's a lot of heat sex involved, so all the necessity and heat related dubious consent warnings apply. Also, this fic deals with a fictional world in the middle of a sort of civil war / genocide situation, so there's some grim themes, OC deaths, fighting, blood, main characters having to deal with both death and killing and so on. This is a dark story (although not without hope), so be warned and steer clear if any of these things might be a problem for you. 
> 
> **Setting Info:** This AU is set in a fictional country where werewolves / shifters are known and there is a long history of unrest between them and humans. In the recent past, that unrest has been fanned into a full blown conflict because of actions taken by the Argents (well, really Gerard and Kate) and their hunter / anti-were party, which have gained leadership of the human faction. In this story both Stiles and Mason are also werewolves. I'm messing a bit with the Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamic, so in this world Alphas function pretty much like in Teen Wolf canon. Omegas exist but are rare and are sexually compatible with anybody, doesn't have to be an Alpha, and omega males are not fertile.

"Go, go, go!" Stiles urged, breath aching in his lungs and heart pounding much too fast. It was fear more than exertion, anxiety throbbing through him as he willed the struggling, hobbling gaggle of badly injured werewolves to move _faster._ He held tightly to the waist of the woman he was supporting with one arm, his fingers white knuckled around the rifle he clutched in the other.

He knew the tattered little group of escapees were doing the best they could. The atrocities performed on them at the euphemistically titled "Research and Detainment Center" from which they'd just been liberated had left many of them seriously maimed. It was a wonder some of them could move at all.  Stiles knew that, but he couldn't help the anxious, worried throbbing in his veins that screamed at him that they were moving too slowly.

Dark, silent buildings rose up around them; long brick walls and boarded up windows marking the presence of shabby warehouses and factories that made up this corner of the rundown industrial distract through which they fled. It was dark and the streets were empty. They were close now, so close, but there were still so many things that could go wrong. Stiles' brain unhelpfully catalogued each and every one and suggested it to him in an unending loop. _What if the others hadn't made it out after they got separated? What if they had gotten caught? What if everyone else had already taken off and they were stranded?  What if their escape route had been discovered and they were walking into a trap?_

A small stab of relief punched through Stiles' knotted gut when they turned a corner and at least some of his fears proved moot when he saw the welcome outline of a dark, windowless van, hidden in the shadows. The relieved sensation increased when Malia appeared a moment later, jumping down sure-footed from her watchful perch in on the fire escape overhead as she saw them approaching. 

"Finally!" she hissed, keeping her voice pitched to a whisper as she quickly yanked open the van's back doors and gestured for them to hurry. "What did you do, stop to sight see?"

Stiles shot the were-coyote an exasperated expression, gesturing around him with his head at the obvious, limping explanation for their lack of speed. "Yeah, picked up some great _wish you weren't here_ post cards in the gift shop," he shot back. 

Malia ignored his sarcasm. "Are you alone?" she asked, scanning the shadows of the alley behind him with a frown.

Stiles shook his head. "We picked up some unwanted attention. Liam and Mason fell back to play decoy. They're not far behind, should be here any minute. What about the others?"

When they'd left her to guard their escape route, Malia had been presiding over four vans. Now there was only one left. Stiles hoped that meant everyone else had already made it out, with the rest of the escapees in tow. He'd not seen the rest of the pack since they'd been forced to splinter into separate groups after barely making it into the Research Center. He told himself they were fine, but was more worried than he wanted to admit. 

Malia started helping the new arrivals into the waiting vehicle as Stiles herded the last stragglers across the few remaining yards between them and their ticket out of here. The haste of her movements suggested that she was feeling the same pinch of time that was goosing Stiles with increasing vehemence. The plan had always been for the escape vans to go out alone, at intervals. They had a better chance of making it out undetected if they didn't travel in en masse, but they'd never meant to space them out quite _this_ far apart.

"Everybody else is already on their way," Malia confirmed. "If Liam and Mason are with you, that means everyone's made it out except Theo."

Stiles made a face. "No such luck, he's with Liam and Mason."

Malia squinted at him with what might have been disapproval, but her attention was diverted back to the flow of injured weres scrambling into the van.  A boy of maybe twelve or thirteen slipped and nearly fell as he attempted to clamber inside. He was missing most of his right leg and his left was pocked with dark markings. A slender teenage girl sporting a dark ponytail and a determined set to her exhausted features was supporting the youth. She caught him when he slipped and tried to boost him up, but even though she appeared less injured than her companion, raising her arms above shoulder height seemed to be extremely painful for her.  

Malia deftly swooped the boy up in her arms and placed him inside the vehicle, keeping the flow moving. The boy winced at the abrupt jarring, but offered no complaint as he scooted backward across the floor on his butt to make way for others. They all knew the stakes.

Stiles finally reached the van himself, bringing up the group's rear with the middle-aged woman he was supporting. He was practically carrying her by now, but he didn't begrudge her that. Honestly, given the severity of her injuries, it was a wonder she was able to aide in her own support at all. Her determination and endurance amazed him. The woman's legs were almost useless and her body was riddled with unhealed injuries. Disconnected pipes and tubes snaked out of her gut as if an alien was trying to claw its way free, dripping blood, but too dangerous for them to attempt to remove until they were somewhere safer. She'd probably need surgery to set things right, like a lot of the people they'd rescued tonight. Privately, Stiles wondered if even their kind's advanced healing would be enough to set these people fully right again. Many of them would probably be marked for life. The grotesque mutilations that had been practiced upon them were so hideous it made Stiles want to throw up, only he didn't have time.

Malia and the girl with the dark ponytail took the injured older woman from him as Stiles helped her to the rear of the van. Up close, Stiles noticed that dark red burns stood out livid and angry against ponytail girl's pale, exposed arms, although she still seemed in somewhat better shape than many of the others. There was something strangely tender and desperate in the way she touched the older woman as she took her from Stiles. Anguish, worry and anger was written all over the younger woman's face, while pain and determination dominated that of the elder. Their features and hair color were actually quite similar, Stiles suddenly realized, and when the older woman dropped a familiar type of steadying touch on the younger's shoulder, he felt certain they were mother and daughter.

Hands freed, Stiles glanced at his watch and resisted the urge to swear. They were cutting it way too close, pushed up hard against the back edge of their narrow time window. "Shit, they'll have opened the breach already," he mumbled, partially to Malia, but mostly to himself. They'd already hit the agreed upon cut off point, and it was still going to take them at least another two minutes to reach the breach point, even driving like a bat out of hell. His anxiety returned full force.

Getting here had taken a lot longer than anticipated. Just like pretty much _everything_ else about this mission had from the start. They'd planned this as a quick in and out raid, only it hadn't turned out that way, not by a long shot.

They were in the very heart of Argent territory, here. The entire city of Havre was surrounded by anti-werewolf defenses, including a well maintained and supposedly impenetrable barrier of mountain ash. They'd known this would be a difficult nut to crack, and had planned accordingly. What they _hadn't_ counted on was just how formidable some of their adversaries would be. They hadn't been prepared for the creepy, bizarre, phase-shifting "doctors" who ran the laboratory from hell that the Argents euphemistically called a "research center", or how _many_ loyal, deadly chimeras the doctors had created to act as guard dogs for the facility.

Once in through the fortress city's outer defenses, they'd been stuck hiding out in Havre for almost two weeks as they tried to figure out how to penetrate the Research Center's defenses and stage the breakout. That had been a full week and a half longer than they'd anticipated being there.

Being forced to spend so much extra time in a hostile city with the constant threat of discovery hanging over their heads had been dangerous for all of them, but Stiles had special cause to be concerned about the altered time table. His fingers ghosted unconsciously across the front of his jacket, above where he kept his little container of pills safely buttoned up in an inner pocket. He was just damn lucky he always carried extra, or the delay could have made real trouble for him.

All things considered, the escape had really gone off relatively well, despite absolutely _nothing_ going exactly to plan. _Not that it ever really **did.**_

Stiles nearly jumped out of his skin when the radio in his ear radio crackled suddenly to life, indicating that the situation had become desperate enough to warrant breaking the strict radio silence they had had to maintain up to now in order to avoid detection.

Allison's voice came to him in urgent tones around bursts of static.  "Where are you?! The guards found the breach, they're here!" she said in a breathless rush, confirming Stiles' worst fear and making his blood cold in his veins. 

"We're coming!" Stiles assured, his heart hammering again. "We're coming!"

"Well come _faster_!" Lydia's voice jumped into the conversation on the shared com channel. Like Allison, her voice was strained and choppy, as if she were talking and moving at the same time. Probably fighting.

"Behind you!" Kira's voice cut in, and Stiles whirled around, but of course, she'd actually been talking to either Allison or Lydia. There was a moment of chaos and garbled sounds. Stiles heard growls and shocks of weapon fire amid the bursts of static. Lydia's voice cut in again in a tense, bumpy rush.

"Not too many yet, we're holding them off for the moment, but that's not going to last long. We're too exposed here. Derek is doing his damndest to protect Scott and we're trying to cover them, but Scott's wearing out fast. Stiles, he can't hold the rift in the ash open much longer. The rest of the transports are already through, you're the last ones. Where the _hell_ areyou?!"

"Taking off right now, be there in two!" Stiles promised, making an urgent cycling motion with his hand towards Malia, who could hear the same thing he was hearing and was already urging everyone inside the van to push back as far as they could. This was going to be one very cramped ride, but they'd make it work. 

"Hurry," Allison urged. "I don't think we can hold this position much longer."

Stiles knew that she meant she wasn't sure they could hold it for as long as he was asking, but he also knew that she and the others wouldn't give up until everyone was out safe, no matter what it cost them. That thought spurred him to even greater urgency.

Stiles spun around, searching the alley behind them for the three remaining members of the party that should have already caught up. There was no sign of them.

"Guys, you heard her, let's go!" he hissed into the radio. "The last ship is sailing, get your butts in gear!"

There was no answer. Liam, Mason and Theo should have heard everything that Stiles and Malia had just heard. They should have responded. They should _be here_ already. They weren't. Stiles felt a desperate sensation growing in his stomach. A garbled, growl-filled hiss of static came to him over the com, but he wasn't sure who it was coming from.

Suddenly the night air was split with the chilling sound of a wolf howl. It echoed around in the deserted, twilight clad streets, raising immediate gooseflesh on Stiles' arms. It brushed across his instincts with a sense of urgency, tugging at him on an atavistic level.

It was Liam, howling in pain, rage and fear. Stiles knew that at once, recognizing the sound as only wolves in a pack could do. Howling in an Argent stronghold was a good way to bring down every hunter within earshot. Liam should have known better, but Stiles didn't suppose he had done it intentionally. The young werewolf sounded like he was in serious trouble and was unconsciously, but instinctively, calling for his alpha.

Even at this distance, Scott could probably hear him. Somehow, he always did. But Scott was stuck holding open their escape route; he couldn't respond without condemning everyone still inside the barrier, including Liam. Liam and the others were Stiles' responsibility now.

"Stiles! What's going on?!" Allison's worried, urgent voice came to him over the radio again, indicating that she too had probably either heard or at least felt the ripple of Liam's distress call. 

"Nothing, it's under control, we're on our way!" Stiles told her. Just then a bullet whistled by Stiles' head and pinged off the van. Like the first drops of a spring rain, it was quickly followed by a rapid volley of its fellows.

Malia slammed the back doors of the armored van shut to protect the occupants inside. She, Stiles and ponytail girl all dived behind the vehicle for cover.

"We've been made! We're coming in hot!" Stiles warned Allison over the radio. "Soon as the van's cleared the breach you all get the hell out and don't stop for anything!"

Leaning around the back of the vehicle, Stiles shoved his gun around the corner and blindly popped off a few rounds just to keep their attacker's heads down. Rubber bullets, of course, because heaven _forbid_ they risk killing the people trying to kill _them_. The weapon was only useful against humans, not chimeras, but Stiles was pretty sure that's what they were up against here, since chimeras wouldn't be _shooting_ at them.

He heard a brief _pop, pop, pop_ from behind him and knew without looking that Malia was also returning fire around the other side of van. This was no good. They were out of time.

Slinging the rifle strap off his shoulder, Stiles shoved the weapon into ponytail girl's hands. _Cora,_ his mind suddenly decided to supply. He'd heard someone call her Cora.

"Go!" he said urgently, gesturing at the van.

He stuck his head out again, trying to judge the quickest, safest route back down the alley, towards the direction from which Liam's howl had come. It would help if he knew where the shots were coming from, but that wasn't easy to determine. The bullets themselves were loud enough as they pinged off the vehicle and the gravel road, but the weapons firing them must be using charmed silencers because the shots were unusually soundless, intentionally making it hard to pinpoint their origin. However, based on the angle Stiles thought they were coming from the roof on the right, and that there was only one shooter. It was a sure bet there would be more soon. 

Pulling his head back, he met Malia's gaze squarely. "Don't tell them we're not with you until everyone is out and safe. They can't afford to wait for us; we'll find another way."

Without waiting for a response, Stiles broke cover and sprinted away at supernatural speed, zigzagging to dodge the incoming stutter of shots and vaulting up a rusting fire-escape. He located the shooter on the rooftop as he'd thought. He couldn't smell the human, not even when he was right up on top of him, which was a weird sensation. Stiles could see him just fine, however. The hunter saw Stiles too, but he didn't react quickly enough to stop him, or nail him with one of the almost certainly poisoned bullets.

Stiles knocked the man unconscious with one good blow to the head. As the hunter dropped, Stiles glimpsed a dark scrawl of tattoos peeking out from under the rolled up sleeves of the man's shirt. Their familiar shapes explained why Stiles hadn't been able to scent the hunter. The markings were scent masking wards. The tats were crude and the spell work basic, but effective. Stiles rubbed his own arm unconsciously. Behind and below him, he heard the van's engine roar as it gunned away with a squeal of tires and spitting gravel.

Glancing over his shoulder, he caught the red flick of taillights before they were gone into the blackness. Something dark and cold opened up in Stiles' stomach and he shoved it down. He didn't have time to freak out, he had to stay focused. He tried to feel glad the others were on their way, and not utterly terrified at what he'd just done and how he'd trapped himself here. He tried to think about what he needed to do next, and not what would happen to him if he were caught. It wasn't easy. The mix of fear and horror instilled in him by the condition of the people they'd just rescued was strong and he felt a sudden, intense urge to bash the head of the unconscious man on the ground a second time; this time hard enough that he'd never wake up and never be a threat to them again.

Forcing himself to breathe deeply, Stiles resisted the urge.

Dangerously distracted, he didn't see or hear the second, similarly scent-masked enemy who had appeared on the other side of the roof and now had him in his sights. A rustle of movement and the sharp sound of flesh striking flesh made his heart jump up into his throat and his claws pop as he spun around.

Stiles turned to find Malia standing over the crumpled, unconscious form of the second hunter. A strong surge of relief was quickly followed by an equally strong sense of guilt.

"What the hell are you doing here?!" he hissed as they made their way quickly down off the roof. There may only have been two hunters here, but they had undoubtedly reported their position and more would be coming.

"Saving your butt, apparently," Malia said dryly. "You're welcome."

"Yeah, yeah, thanks, but the van...!" Stiles shook his head, grateful, yes, but also peeved. He'd not meant for her to follow him and become trapped here too.

"They'll be fine. Cora's driving. The directions aren't complicated and she seems very capable," Malia said simply, sounding confident.

Stiles didn't doubt that, but that wasn't exactly the point he'd been trying to make. There wasn't time to worry about it further though because the sound of a faint, distant snarl came to them, carried on the wind. It wasn't nearly so loud or identifiable as the howl had been, but they both knew it meant trouble.

Hitting the ground, they broke into a run, silent now as they hurried through the dark tangle of empty streets and alleys, tracking the growing sounds fighting and the scent of their pack mates.

The scene they came upon when they finally found them was grim. Liam and Mason were cornered, pinned down by four snarling chimeras. Stiles wasn't sure what some of them were actually supposed to be, but they all had claws and fangs and were wicked fast.

It was truly ironic that people who hated weres as much as the Argents did had no problem allowing the creation of artificial creatures like this. Probably because they saw them as a slave race that served a purpose; genetically engineered watch dogs to be used and kenneled like animals. They were doing the same thing they condemned werewolves for, turning people into monsters, only of course, the majority of the humans they claimed to be protecting didn’t know that. Allegedly, the chimeras were just weres who were on their side, proof that the Research and Detention Center was some kind of legitimate facility that was happy to rehab human-friendly shifters and make them "contributing members of society" by letting them guard the other, less friendly members of their kin. The hypocrisy of it all made Stiles' teeth ache.

Mason snarled, looking fierce but exhausted as he crouched protectively in front of Liam. Liam was badly hurt. He was unable to stay upright, or hold onto his shift for more than a few moments at a time, despite how hard he was trying. Stiles could smell the wolfsbane poisoning even at this distance, which meant Liam must have taken a round or two from a human assailant. Since there were only chimeras here now and no evidence of any other hunters on the scene yet, it had probably been the work of the two men that he and Malia had already encountered. The hunters must have pressed on after the fleeing prisoners, while the chimeras stayed to deal with this fight. It was a good thing, too. If the chimeras hadn't gotten held up, if they'd hit the transport at the same time as the hunters ... there was no way they could have gotten the prisoners out in time, or maybe at all.

The rear guard had done their job, but they weren't looking good. Liam was too injured to do much. Mason was clearly prepared to defend his friend to the death, but was seriously disadvantaged by being out numbered and forced to stay in one place in order to protect Liam. 

The chimeras were built to be killing machines with deadly levels of strength and speed, even by werewolf standards. The only reason Liam and Mason were able to hold out in their disadvantaged position for as long as they had was because of the third person running interference for them. Not tethered in place like Mason, Theo was darting from fight to fight, harassing and tangling with the other chimeras and keeping them disorganized so they couldn't coordinate enough to team up on their cornered prey. There was a wild, feral kind of grace to his motions that Stiles studiously tried not to notice.

Stiles and Malia dived into the fray, and their arrival provided a distraction which Theo took full advantage of, bashing one of the chimeras he was fighting senseless while stabbing another with a kanima venom dart, effectively dropping her as well. The tables turned, and the two remaining chimeras, now outnumbered, went down fairly quickly. Mason got one, and Malia the other, both of them making use of their own kanima darts to make sure the enemy combatants would _stay_ down long enough for them to get away.

Theo wiped his forehead, running his hand through his short, light hair. He grinned, bending at the middle and resting his hands on his knees. "Boy, am I glad to see you two, kind of thought you were going to leave us." He said it with a smile, but it wasn't entirely a joke. He was breathing hard and the flush of color in his cheeks that was not unattractive.

"Yeah, well, your lucky day," Stiles muttered, quickly diverting his eyes away and kneeling to check on Liam with a worried frown.

Theo either ignored or pretended he didn't hear the bite in Stiles' tone. "Thanks for the save," he said, fixing his smile on Malia.

Malia grinned back, eyebrows lifting a little. "Didn't look like you needed much saving," she said, casting an approving glance at the sprawled forms of the two chimeras Theo had taken down.

Stiles scowled, helping Mason get Liam up onto his feet. The younger werewolf had been shot in the leg and the side. Normally neither wound would have been particularly serious, but the poison spreading through him from the injuries was the true source of concern. "If you're done with the love fest, we really need to get out of here before the rest of the freaking army shows up," he said tersely.

Malia shot him a look that seemed to be asking why he was being such a dick. Stiles had no good answer for that, so he simply looked away. 

In the distance, the city's alarm systems started to wail, multiple high pitched sirens shrieking out an alert, signaling the populace that they had been invaded, the safety and security of their little haven violated. Underneath the clamor came the distant, but rapidly approaching sound of footfalls. They all knew what that meant. This area was going to be swarming with hunters and chimeras soon and they needed to not be here when they arrived. 

Ignoring the tension between the three older teens, Mason silently shouldered Liam's weight before taking off at an admirably fast lope. Everyone else quickly followed suit.

In a matter of minutes the formerly empty streets were alive with the echo of shouts, running feet and the rev of motorcycle engines. The five fugitives ducked from shadow to shadow, struggling to pass undetected as the night lit up around them in a wash of bobbing flashlights and headlights. They could not hope to fight the number of enemy combatants now flooding the area, their only chance was to find some place they could take refuge and hide. Liam's condition made the need to find some such place soon an even more urgent priority. He was in bad shape and would die from the poison chewing up his system if it wasn't treated and countered within the next hour or two.

Some part of Stiles had perhaps still fostered the absurd, wild hope of making  a break for the breach in the city's outer defenses through which the others were hopefully escaping right now. It died a quick, regretful death under the reality of their situation. They couldn't move nearly fast enough with Liam in this condition, and there were simply too many enemies in the way. They'd never make it. The breach had probably already closed. Hiding was their best option, if only they could evade the death trap that this area was quickly becoming long enough to find somewhere suitable.

That was easier said than done. It wasn't long before one of the searching patrols spotted them, and then the chase was on for real. It quickly became obvious that they were in serious trouble if they didn't get creative, fast. Speed would only serve them for so long and every moment that passed was a moment Liam could ill afford. Already he was only semi-lucid, limp in Mason's grip. The strain of poison those hunters had been using must have been very potent. Liam might not have hours. He might not even have minutes, there was no way to tell under these circumstances.  

"Get them some place safe, take care of Liam, we'll draw them away," Stiles panted in a harsh, urgent whisper to Malia when their desperate flight moved them momentarily out of their purser's line of sight. He nodded to himself and Theo, volunteering the two of them to play decoy this time.

Mason was carrying Liam on his back and moving fast despite the weight, but he would be unable to do much fighting if it came to that while cumbered with the other barely conscious teen. He would need someone to watch his back.

Malia nodded, not breaking stride. "We'll try for the Castle," she said, using the ironic code-name they'd given to one of the hiding places they'd secured during their previous period of hiding in Havre. "Meet us there." She and Mason sped up and dashed forward, taking a sharp turn between two buildings while Theo and Stiles slowed and peeled off in the opposite direction.

"Don't follow me," Stiles protested, messily smashed open the door of the nearest building, leaving a trail their pursuers could not fail to notice as he ducked inside. "We should split up, draw them opposite directions."

"Yeah, because that worked out so well last time," Theo said, following him through the ruined door and into the empty, echoing factory floor beyond.

"You got a better idea?" Stiles shot back, then had to duck behind one of the factory's large bits of mechanical equipment as several hunters burst through the door after them, firing into the darkened space with an accuracy that suggested they were wearing night vision gear.

Caught out in the open, Theo evaded the bullets by throwing himself out the nearest window with a rending screech of metal and shattering of glass.

Using the cover of the machine and the distraction of Theo's exit, Stiles made it across the rear of the room and bolted through the doorway into the room beyond. This room was small and offered no exit but a doorway leading to stairwell. He took the stairs two at a time. He exited at the floor above, and proceeded to lead his pursuers on a merry chase through the building, progressively fleeing higher and higher until eventually he reached the top and burst out onto the tall buildings' roof.

One good, running leap took him to the roof of a second, shorter building next door. As he jumped, a brilliant flicker of distant light caught his attention. He paused after landing, just long enough to see that a visible blaze was now lighting the sky to the west. There seemed to be a building engulfed in flames, but he couldn't see much of it from here. For a moment he wondered if it was the Research Center, but he wasn't sure how that could be since as much as that place _deserved_ to burn, they hadn't done any serious damage to it on their way out. This had been a rescue mission and as much as they would all have _liked_ to blow that place to hell, it would have drawn too much attention too quickly, not to mention running the risk of injuring or killing people at work elsewhere in the complex.

Personally, Stiles didn't think that anyone who worked in a place like that could be considered innocent, but he understood Scott's qualms about unwanted collateral damage. The Argents had already painted all weres in general as violent and unprincipled, and their group in particular as bloodthirsty terrorists.

The Argents and their radical faction had built this fortified this town and others like it to be "safe havens" for the humans they'd terrified into believing their lies. Gerard and Kate Argent were militants who believed their own propaganda, or so Allison seemed to think. For his part, Stiles wasn't so sure whether they really thought they were doing a good thing, or if the power and the money of having everyone look to them for protection was at least part of the motivation.

Scott and his pack had never intended to end up the figurehead of the resistance, it was one of those things that had just ended up happening. True Alpha and all that, Stiles supposed. Bottom line was that people needed hope, and Scott bent over backwards to give it to them. After Allison's defection from her family's side to theirs, their pack had quickly risen to the top of the Argent's public enemies list and the hate campaign had been unyielding. To hear the Argents tell it, Stiles and his friends killed any human they came across, ate babies for dinner and indulged in wild, cultish group orgies for dessert. Stiles thought that last was pretty rich, given all the sex he _wasn't_ actually having and how damn inconvenient that was at ... well, at certain times.

To be fair, there had been transgressions on both sides. Some shifters _were_ dangerous and just as prejudiced against humans as the Argents were against them. Things had happened that should not have happened and more than a few people had died, some of them innocent. There were a lot of weres who felt that the only path to safety was to annihilate the opposition, but Scott was of the opinion that meeting violence with violence only fed directly into the flames of hatred being fanned between the two races, which was why they tried so hard to avoid fatalities. Stiles agreed with the principle in theory, although in practice... well, in practice things weren't quite so cut and dried.  

Stiles ran across the roof and jumped down over the side, scaling a rickety old fire escape rapidly downward. From this vantage point, he had a better view of the fire and for a moment his progress faltered as unwanted understanding slammed into him. They had poured over maps of the city for weeks leading up to the raid. Stiles was quite familiar with its geography and was surprised to realize that the building going up in flames was the large, multi-level hospital that sat several blocks away from the Research Center.

His pack hadn't touched that building or even gone near it, but with the city alarm system wailing ... he didn't think the timing was an accident. Stiles felt suddenly sick, sure that agents within the hunter / Argent camp had set fire to their own hospital just so they could blame it on the intruders. They'd done that kind of shit before, but this ... it was monstrous.

Stiles made it back down to the street, continuing to lead his pursuers on a mad chase in what he hoped was the opposite direction from wherever the others had gone. He ended up being driven a lot farther back towards the center of the city than he would have liked, but after a while he finally lost them. Dropping down out of a second floor window into a narrow, dead-end alley, Stiles turned the corner into the street beyond ... only to run right into a throng of enraged civilians, rousted by the general alarm.

There were at least twenty of them. They weren't hunters, but that didn't mean they weren't dangerous. This group had _neighborhood watch militia_ written all over it. They were probably either heading towards the industrial district because they'd heard that's where the action was happening, or they were doing some kind of chaotic canvassing of the area. Stiles wasn't sure, and it didn't really matter. What mattered was that he was in the very wrong place at the wrong time and it sucked. 

Stiles quickly ducked back into the alley from which he'd come, but that was a mistake. He'd already been spotted and the alley was a dead-end with no other outlet.

"Hey! Kid! Hold up," several of the men called to him, pressing into the small side-street after him and bringing with them a wash of flashlight beams.

"What are you doing out here?"

"Are you okay?"

"What's your name? Let's see your ID."

The voices and demands came quickly on top of one another, the agitated men gruff and wary but not overtly threatening, not yet. Stiles was flushed and disheveled, his hair a mess, his hands bloodied from where he'd scraped them up during his flight. Still, he _looked_ human.

He hesitated, heart thundering in his chest as he wondered if he could bluff his way through this. He squinted and blinked, rubbing his nose and patting his pockets as he gave them the first random name that came to mind and feigned surprise at not being able to find his ID.

Maybe any other night they might have bought it, but not tonight. Not with the flaming beacon of the burning hospital lighting up the night behind them and the city alarms still ringing. One of the men lifted his flashlight, shining it full into Stiles' eyes.

Stiles winced and closed them quickly, jerking his head away, but he could tell from the shift in scents and sudden inhalations around him that it was too late. They'd seen his eyes reflect the light, and they knew what that meant.

Spots still dancing before his eyes and clouding his vision, Stiles bolted for the mouth of the alley, trying to bowl his way through them and break free. He had the strength and speed, but they had numbers. The cry of _"Stop him!"_ and _"Werewolf!"_ that instantly went up brought a wall of bodies pressing forward to hedge him in.

Aware of how dangerous even a single shifter could be, the group attacked with urgent ferocity, obviously believing they were fighting for their lives. Their fear galvanized with fury over the atrocity of what they _thought_ he had done, they mobbed Stiles in a desperate, flailing thicket of flying fists, feet and whatever other weapons they were carrying.

Stiles tried to twist away from the rush of abuse, shielding his head with his arms and attempting to force his way free. He just wanted to escape. He didn't want to have to fight or injure them. They weren't hunters. They weren't the enemy, even if they didn't realize it. They were just ordinary people who thought they were protecting their homes and their families. Ordinary people who had thought they were safe only to have their sense of security brutally shattered. Stiles knew what that felt like. He remembered the day their school had been firebombed back at the start of the madness, before the hunts and the camps and the hiding. He remembered what it felt like to lose _normal_ forever.

Stiles didn't want to fight them, and that cost him, dearly.

A painful jolt of electricity shocked through him, tightening his muscles into an agonizing spasm and dropping him to his knees. The stun baton was jabbed into his back again and he cried out, convulsing. Something a lot heavier and more substantial than the baton smashed into his shoulder and then his side; a pipe maybe, or a tire iron. Stiles cried out again, pain blazing through him as he fell forward onto his hands. The electrical stimulus temporarily robbed him of his ability to fight or even resist. His jangled muscles were caught in spasms and responded only sluggishly to his attempts to protect himself. He felt like he was suffocating, trapped under a mass of angry bodies. It was both claustrophobic and terrifying.

A knee smashed into his face, breaking his nose and finally sending him sprawling. His bones had re-knit before he even hit the ground. The pipe slammed into him over and over, now joined by a flurry of feet kicking and stamping viciously. Hard boots kicked him in the head and came down repeatedly on his chest and gut. Stiles heard a snapping sound and felt fiery, staccato bursts of pain. If he didn't have advanced healing, he'd probably already be dead. Fortunately for him, his body was fixing itself as fast as they tried to take him apart, but that didn't mean that every bruising blow and crushed bone didn't hurt. It hurt like _hell._

The stun baton hit him again and Stiles writhed, screaming and struggling not to black out. He was in trouble. _Serious_ trouble. The world swam around him and his body went limp. After a minute or two the men finally noticed the lack of resistance and eased up.

Someone grabbed the Stiles, dragging him out of the alley and into the street were the light was better and there was more room.

Semi-conscious, Stiles blinked sluggishly, watching the world go by in a blur of colors and motion. He was dropped unceremoniously near the side of the road. His head bounced a little, asphalt rough and gritty under his cheek. Blood was trickling into his eyes. He blinked harder, trying to clear them. There wasn't much to see except for feet and the grated storm drain across from him.  He flexed his fingers slowly at his side. The effects of the electricity were starting to wear off and motion starting to return, but slowly.

"We should wait, hold him for the Peace Keeps," someone was arguing overhead.

"Fuck that! You know what they did! Give me the _fucking_ machete," someone else responded angrily, instigating a minor scuffle.

Stiles swallowed, knowing the men were arguing about turning him over to the hunters or just killing him outright. Wolfsbane bullets were expensive and apparently none of these men were armed with such, but a machete would do the job just fine. If they took his head off, no amount of healing in the world would save him. Stiles wasn't sure which option frightened him more, but neither was attractive.

Screwing up his courage and knowing he didn't have time to wait for a better moment, Stiles rolled sideways. Aching body protesting, he grabbed the grating that partially covered the large storm drain set into the curb and yanked it free in one rapid, desperate motion. With no time for caution or finesse, he dived through the resulting hole, pitching himself down head first into whatever lay beyond.

Stiles was lucky for his somewhat slight build. If he'd been much larger, he never would have fit through the narrow opening. It was a tight fit as it was, the edges scraping at him and barking his shins as he tumbled downward. The drop was farther than he'd expected and he landed with a splash in nearly three feet of water below. It had rained heavily the past week and the storm drains were doing their jobs. 

The speed and suddenness of his exit created a moment of disarray amongst his would-be captors and Stiles tried to make the most of it, fumbling to his feet somewhat clumsily and splashing rapidly downstream ... or upstream?  Honestly, he couldn't tell, the water wasn't really flowing as much as sitting there. The storm drain was large, not quite large enough for him to stand all the way up, not once he was out of the surface access drain, but large enough that he could move at a kind of shuffling half-run if he stayed bent over.

Two of the men from above were small enough and either brave or stupid enough to follow him. Stiles heard them drop into the water behind him as he ran. It seemed no one had ever warned them against following a wounded bear into a den.

Still woozy from the beating he'd just taken and seriously slowed by the bad angle, Stiles wasn't able to muster anything like his normal speed. He was able to stay ahead of the two humans, but only just, and after a few minutes of splashing along and taking random turns when they appeared, Stiles hit a patch of the drain that sloped sharply and unexpectedly downward. He lost his footing, slithering down the chute like a water slide and striking his already battered head hard on the wall.

The few dazed moments it took him to recover himself were enough for his pursuers to catch up with him. They slammed into him, the force of their rush sending all three of them tumbling down the next slanted section of the drain beyond. Lost flashlights went tumbling, creating a nauseating strobe effect. They must have been water resistant, because they continued to shine after they finally came to rest on the bottom, illuminating the water from beneath like a fountain or a swimming pool.

Stiles came up swinging, punching one man in the face and elbowing the other in the gut. His heart was racing out of his chest and it took all his control to not shift.

"Just leave me alone! I don't want to hurt you!" he half shouted, half growled. "We didn't do what you think we did! We came here to rescue people who were being _tortured_ in the Research and Detention Center. We had nothing to do with the hospital, they're lying to you!" he tried desperately to reason as they grappled and struggled. He didn't think that would do any good, or that they would believe him, so he wasn't overly disappointed.

One of the men was apparently Mr. Pipe-Wielder from earlier, because he wacked Stiles a good one across the head with it, sending him pitching violently down into the water. Both men piled on top of him, holding him under.

Head sparking and exploding in pain, Stiles struggled disjointedly, water stinging his eyes and burning his throat as he struggled not to inhale it. His lungs ached and burned, lights popping behind his eyes. A hot, slicing pain blossomed in his chest and the water went red. One of the men over him had a knife, and he was punching down with it wildly, stabbing Stiles repeatedly in the chest.

Whatever air remained in Stiles' lungs expelled in a rush of bubbles accompanying his silent scream. The pain was intense as the water went crimson around him and he couldn't breathe, _he couldn't breathe._ Panic took Stiles and his control snapped.

He shifted, his claws digging up into the man over him in a desperate bid to make him let go. With a choked roar that was half scream, Stiles heaved upward, finally getting his head above water. The man straddling him was cursing and yelling, swinging wildly with the knife. Stiles scrabbled at him, clawing at whatever was in reach to try and push him away as he wriggled out from underneath him. The second man slammed into his back, getting the pipe length-wise across Stiles' neck and jerking back with both hands, trying to throttle him.

Gasping for breath and half blinded by water and blood, Stiles twisted violently, catching the man's arm, ripping his grip free and throwing him across the tunnel. The man struck the wall hard and crumpled.

Lurching and staggering, Stiles clawed his way up to his knees. Dripping water and blood and heaving for breath, he looked around wildly for the next threat, the next attack... but all was stillness now. Neither of the humans were moving. Or breathing. The only sound in the tunnel was his own pounding heart and gasping breaths. The water he knelt in was almost pure crimson, the submerged flashlight beams painting the tunnel in wavering vermillion hues like some kind of ghastly trick lighting.

There was no way all that blood was Stiles'.

Cautiously, he crawled to the nearest body and turned the man over. He stared down numbly at the lifeless face that greeted him. The man's face was raked with claw marks and his throat had been slashed. Dark arterial blood was still oozing slowly from the wound, but the fact that it was no longer spurting and the glassy, empty gaze of the man's eyes said that it was already all over for him.

Hand suddenly trembling, Stiles backed quickly away. He didn't remember doing that. Hadn't _meant_ to do that. Not that it made a difference.

The other man was dead too. The side of his head was bashed in from how hard he'd struck the tunnel wall and his neck was canted at an unnatural angle.

Stiles crawled a little distance away before throwing up. It was nerves as much as anything else, he supposed. It wasn't like these were his first kills, nor would they be his last, probably ... and maybe _that_ was really what made him retch. That and the fact that he could hardly even feel guilty, because he just felt so overwhelmingly _relieved._

The sound of motion made Stiles' aching body stiffen. Rocking back on his knees, Stiles greeted the new arrival with a warning snarl that diminished only slightly when he saw who it was.

The tunnel ahead turned a corner before going down into another steep drop, Stiles could hear the running water from here. Theo must have climbed up it, and Stiles must have been too preoccupied retching to notice, because the part wolf, part coyote chimera had come around the corner and was now crouching in front of Stiles, regarding  him with unreadable eyes.

For a fleeting, perhaps ridiculously paranoid moment, Stiles wondered if he'd really been so out of it as to completely miss the sound of the other boy's entire journey, or if Theo had been here the whole time. That didn't seem likely though ... did it?

"Easy, easy," Theo raised his hands in a gesture of non-threat when Stiles fixed him with burning eyes and bared teeth. "Just me."

Stiles didn't find that particularly reassuring, but he was still reeling and absent any clear and present threat his energy was failing him. His shift slid from him. He tried to move and almost pitched forward into the water.

Theo caught him and Stiles leaned against him for a moment, breathing hard, dripping water and blood as he struggled to regain both his inner and outer equilibrium.

"Hey, it's okay, you're going to be okay," Theo murmured reassuringly.

That made Stiles feel unreasonably annoyed, which ironically helped him shake off some of his malaise and feel a little better. He pulled away from Theo, nearly fell again and caught the wall for support. "Of course I am," he muttered.

"Come on, there's an exit this way," Theo told him, turning around in the tight space and heading back the way he'd presumably come. Stiles followed.

There was another drop around the corner, as he'd suspected. After that, the tunnel forked in two different directions. Normally, he would not have liked following Theo's lead on anything, but just now he was too busy trying to recover to care much and followed without comment as Theo took them down the passage to the right. After a few minutes, it narrowed into a sloping culvert that let out into a deep ditch in some part of the city that Stiles didn't recognize. He could hear traffic somewhere nearby, but the shadows down here at the bottom of the deep, deep ditch that housed the culvert and the small stream that issued from it were thick and comforting.

The culvert was set four or five feet above the bottom of the ditch, but the height of the water disguised the distance. Misjudging how far it was to solid ground, Stiles slipped and floundered when he exited, flailing about for an ungraceful moment before Theo again caught and steadied him.

"Hey... careful... are you sure you're okay?" Theo said with a little amusement and what looked a hell of a lot like genuine concern.

Rattled, worked up and running off a bad adrenaline trip, Stiles clung to Theo for several moments longer than he would otherwise have liked as he floundered and tried to get his bearings. His head still felt raw and a little muddled. As soon as he found his footing, he pulled away sharply once more.

"What are you _doing_ here?" he finally thought to ask, coughing a little when he tried to talk. As some of his initial shock wore off reality was settling back in, reminding him that he should not be pleased to see Theo here, with his stupidly handsome face and stupidly charming smile and stupidly attractive concern that was probably fake, fake, _fake_ and treacherous as a cobra _._

Theo shrugged, half swimming, half wading to the bank. Once there, he shook water from his hair and clothes. "Had a little run-in with a couple of our chimera friends from earlier. The venom didn't keep them down very long. Think they were carrying a grudge." He gave a rueful expression. "Used the sewers as an escape route. The water made me harder to track. Lost them eventually. Just found this exit when I smelled your blood. Went back in, followed it until I found you. Thought you might need help." Again with that charming little smile that Stiles wanted to hate.

"Yeah, well, I didn't," Stiles said as he aggressively wrung bloody water from the hem of his torn jacket.

"I can see that," Theo agreed, glancing back towards the darkness of the culvert and the things that lay beyond in a knowing manner.

Stiles' jaw tightened and he looked away, resolutely picking his way down the steep, slippery side of the ditch, just above the water line.

Theo followed him, catching Stiles' elbow in a steadying grasp when Stiles tottered a little on the treacherous footing.

Stiles fixed him with a venomous look and deliberately shrugged out from under his hand.

Theo raised his hands innocently again. "You really don't have to bite my head off. I'm just trying to help."

"Oh yeah, like you _helped_ us get into that wanna-be Nazi installation back there?" Stiles rounded on him with sudden vehemence. "If you wanted to _help,_ maybe you could have _warned_ us that those freaky steam-punk nightmare doctors would be so damn hard to evade. Or, here's a thought, maybe you could have mentioned just how _many_ of your freaky little siblings they'd cooked up, because I'm pretty damn sure there were almost twice as many chimeras as you told us there would be!"

"I've been gone for over six months, Stiles, a lot can change in that time," Theo pointed out, a hint of ire finally creeping into his eyes and his tone. "I can't tell what I don't know. The Doctors mess with people's memory, maybe that's why I didn't remember everything about them, or maybe I just never saw that side of them before, I don't know. I told you everything I could and you would _never_ have gotten into this city, much less into the Center, without me. You wouldn't have even known you _needed_ to." Theo sighed, looking away and rubbing his neck as if gathering his calm. When he looked back, his expression was still intense, but a little calmer and more persuasive now.

"I get that you don't like me, but I'm doing my best here, okay? My neck is _way_ out there on the line, what more do you want from me?  What will it take to get you to trust me, Stiles?  I didn't _have_ to stay behind to help Liam and Mason, you know. Now that the other chimeras know I'm here they are never going to stop hunting me. It's not a coincidence that they came after me again so soon. The Doctors want me _back._ Do you have _any_ idea how totally screwed I am if they catch me?"

Stiles glared ahead as he picked his way carefully along. "No, actually, I don't. For all I know, you're still working for them."

Theo shook his head, looking mildly disgusted. "How does that even make _sense_ after what we just did?  How could losing their test subjects benefit them, or me, or the Argents, or whoever it is you think I'm in league with?"

"It would benefit them all plenty if this was a giant trap to lure us into their stronghold so they could eliminate us," Stiles pointed out, tight lipped. "They've been trying to capture or kill Scott for months, now he's on their doorstep, vulnerable and drained half to death from holding the barrier open. Would his death be worth the loss of a few prisoners to them? Yeah, I think so." Stiles stopped walking long enough to fix Theo with a flat, steady look. "By the way, if that happens? I'm going to kill you," he promised simply before turning and continuing on. It wasn't a threat. It was a fact.

Perhaps the others were right, and Stiles was being unreasonable, but he just didn't trust Theo. He didn't trust how friendly he was with everybody, how quickly people came to like him or how firmly he'd worked his way into Scott's confidence in the relatively short time he'd been with them. Theo had been nothing but helpful since he'd showed up with his tale of woe and horror, but ... but sometimes he was _too_ helpful. Lydia had teased Stiles that perhaps he was jealous because he thought Theo was gunning for his job as pack second, even though they all knew he had nothing to worry about on that score. That wasn't it though, not really, Stiles didn't think Theo wanted his position... but some days, he got the feeling he may want _Scott's._ Of course, some days, especially lately, Scott would probably be glad to let him have it.

None of them had wanted or anticipated how involved or crucial their pack would become to the resistance movement. They had been nobodies from nowhere and some days, Stiles wished they could go back there. When he was growing up, the Hales had always been the big political cheeses among the shifter factions. They were the ones who kept the peace... but they had almost all disappeared, presumably killed along with a lot of others the same day Scott and Stiles' school had burned. The vicious string of firebombing attacks had come to be known as Immolation Tuesday, and had been the opening salvo in the latest round of an age-old racial conflict that had finally progressed into all out genocide.

Derek Hale had survived, as it turned out, and the fact that he'd eventually thrown in with them had helped solidify their mostly unwanted but necessary position among the new order, such as it was. A lot had changed over the years and they were all dealing with the new patterns that had emerged from the ashes as best they could.

Careful not to be spotted or attract any further attention, Stiles and Theo worked their way slowly and cautiously across the city towards the hiding place they had designated "the Castle". It was actually an unused maintenance attic space in an abandoned building whose chief selling point was that its location and vantage allowed them the ability to see or hear anyone coming from a good distance off and gave them several options of egress in a pinch.

Stiles hoped that the others had made it there so they could rendezvous as planned and not have to resort to risky radio communications. For once that night, something actually _did_ go according to plan. Malia, Mason and Liam were already settled into the small space when they arrived. Stiles felt a wave of exhaustion finally catching up with him as he exchanged weary, relieved greetings with them and flopped down onto the floor. Theo sat down next to him and Stiles didn't even have the energy to glower at him as they both sat, leaching water into the wooden floorboards.

Liam was curled up with his head on Mason's lap and Malia was positioned nearby. Liam's poisoning had obviously been treated. He was still hurting, but looked like he would recover. Mason and Malia were all right, but a lot worse for wear then when Stiles had seen them last, indicating that they probably had their own harrowing adventures getting here.

Malia took one look at Stiles and Theo's wet clothes and Stiles' tattered and generally roughed up appearance and lifted her brows questioningly. "What happened to _you_?"  

Stiles smiled without mirth. "What didn't?"

"You okay?"

"Yeah, nothing that won't mend. Just a little run-in with some well meaning citizens of this fair city," he replied sarcastically.  

"U-us t-too," Liam murmured groggily. The way his voice slurred and stuttered said that while he may be on the mend, he was far from well.

"We ran into some locals down by Farm Street," Mason elaborated when Stiles fixed them with an inquiringly look. "Gave them the slip pretty quick though and nobody got hurt."

Stiles looked away. "Good," he said. "That's good."

Liam snorted softly. "S-so you're nob-body now?" he muttered.

"We heal, we're fine," Mason  pointed out consolingly.

Liam mumbled exactly what he thought about that, and about blind, fanatical bone-heads with pitchforks stuck living in the dark ages. His frustration was understandable, although the vehemence behind it was probably fueled at least in part by his own sense of guilt over his helplessness.

"Should have taken that bigoted jerk's head off _,_ " Liam grumbled, venting more than serious.

"Sure, Liam, sure. That would have really shown them how wrong they are about us," Mason replied wryly.

"Well it's not like they c- _care,_ " Liam retorted. "D-did you _see_ what they were doing to the people in that - that _place?_ " Horror echoed hollowly in his voice, making him sound even younger than he was. "I don't know why we try to protect any of them after that."

"Because not everyone in Havre is responsible. Most of the normal grunts have no idea what the Argents and the Doctors are doing, or how they're being lied to." Stiles rubbed the bridge of his nose. He really, _really_ didn't want to be having this conversation, but Scott had asked him to look out for Liam and he didn't want the kid going all Anakin Skywalker on them. It had been years since Stiles had seen those movies, almost another lifetime ago, but he could still hear his inner little green muppet saying how _"once down the dark path you go, forever will it dominate your destiny"_.  It was probably too late for him, but not for Liam, not yet.

"They think they're defending their homes from terrorists. They were primed against us for exactly this kind of situation. The Argents make sure of that, because it keeps the whole city dangerous for us. If we respond by reacting like the monsters they say we are, then we prove their point for them and they win," he said the well practiced words with tense, weary practicality, gazing fixedly down at his hands and knowing what an utter hypocrite he was even as he spoke. There was blood under his fingernails. He could practically feel Theo's silent, knowing eyes on him and it made him want to punch the other boy repeatedly, although it wasn't really Theo he was angry with.  

Malia tilted her head back against the wall behind her speculatively. "I get that, but I don't think it's wrong to kill someone who's trying to kill you," she said simply. She wouldn't of course, not with her history, but the way she looked at Stiles made him feel uncomfortably like she knew more than he'd like her to know. Or, maybe everyone was right and he was just extremely paranoid in general. 

Malia's family had been murdered when she was a child. She had narrowly escaped the same fate and spent years hiding and living alone in the woods as a coyote in order to survive until Scott and Stiles had found her last year. She'd adapted to a more human life and changed a lot since then, but there was a lot of the wild still in her and it was hard for some people to understand or relate to her. Oddly, Stiles didn't find it very difficult at all. She had a certain law-of-the-jungle pragmatism that he could appreciate. Especially ... well, especially lately. 

Silence stretched over the room, everyone lost in their own thoughts.

Stiles felt a little unwell, his skin a little too warm. It was probably just the after-effects of the run-ins he'd had, but he slid his hand into his ruined jacket to reach for his pills anyway. His stomach knotted harshly when he found that at least one of the cracks he had heard earlier _hadn't_ been bone. His waterproof pill case had been smashed, the pills inside ruined and washed away by all the subsequent water and violent dunking down in the storm drains.

Stiles struggled not to visibly react or let anyone else see his distress. This was _not_ good. Not good at _all_ , but he told himself it would be all right. He could go without pills for a little while, no problem. He'd done it before, even if never this dangerously close to his cycle. He told himself he just had to hold out until they could get out of here and back to the Preserve. Then he could disappear for a couple days and sweat it out, like usual. He'd just say he needed some alone time to clear his head after the mission or something, no one would question that; Scott would make sure they didn't. Scott would cover for him, like always. Perks of being BFFs with the pack leader. So, he'd be fine, really, he could do this. It would be okay because it had to be.

A faint, crackly hail from Lydia on the radio broke the silence that had settled over the exhausted, battered shifters in the attic. The ear-piece of Stiles' radio had been smashed and severed in his earlier confrontation, something he only realized now, but his sharp hearing picked up Lydia's voice coming from the intact ear bud that was currently dangling on its cord from a clip on Theo's jacket, next to him.

Stiles snatched the ear bud up without asking permission, holding it to his ear and fumbling for the narrow toggle switch further up the wire that would let him broadcast as well as receive. "Lydia?!" There had been little to no cellular cover in this area since the towers were destroyed last year. Radio communication could be intercepted and was therefore dangerous, but Stiles didn't care about that right now. He was intensely glad to be distracted from his own thoughts and urgently hungry for news of the others.

Theo obligingly unclipped his com and fed more of the wire to Stiles, so that he wasn't sitting with his head practically jammed against Theo's chest in order to use the radio.

"Why the _hell_ aren't you idiots on the last transport?!" Lydia's voice was angry, and loud enough for people with heightened senses to hear even without direct contact with the com. Stiles actually winced and moved the radio a little further away from his ear.

"You made it out? You're okay? Is everybody okay?" Stiles pressed her, trying to ignore her question for the moment.

"Yes, we're fine. Everybody's fine, except you and the others who _were not on the transport._ You said you would be, Stiles!" Lydia continued to rage. "We're halfway back to the Preserve, you morons! Where are you?!" 

Stiles would have been perfectly happy to let someone _else_ answer that question, but he had Theo's radio, Malia shot him an _oh no, this one's all yours_ look and neither Mason nor Liam seemed to feel inclined to jump in either. _Cowards._ Of course, he _was_ the one who had lied about being on the transport, so he supposed on some level it was fair, although really, hadn't he already been punished enough tonight?

"We're... uh... we're still in Havre," Stiles said slowly. He winced in preparation of another outburst, but Lydia went dead silent for a long moment instead.

"Crap," her voice was a whisper now, and the desolation in it was worse than the anger had been. "Crap, I was afraid of that. What happened?"   

Stiles told her, as succinctly and matter-of-factly as his rambling style of narration allowed. "Look, it's okay, I mean, we've already been hiding out in this city for weeks, we can do it a little more," he finished optimistically, although they both knew that the situation was entirely different now. Before, the powers that be had been content in the imperviousness of their city's defenses and had been unaware of their presence. Now, the city was on alert and there would undoubtedly be epic manhunts and tightened security everywhere.

"We'll just ... um, we'll just keep our heads down and look for another way out," he told her, not looking at the others since all of them knew how very unlikely and remote that possibility was. It wasn't as if the mountain ash barrier were just sprinkled about on the ground in a line you could get someone to break. It was buried hundreds of feet under the ground. "Or, you know, until Scott's up to busting through the wall again. Don't suppose you have any idea how long that might be?" he asked, knowing it would probably be quite a while. It took a _lot_ out of Scott to break through that kind of barrier, he had to be critically drained after holding an opening for as long as he just did.

Lydia hesitated. "I'm not sure... Scott's seriously down for the count right now, but Derek and Isaac are both with him and maybe with a lot of help... maybe a week?"

Stiles blinked, surprised by that answer. "That seems awfully short."

"Normally, yes, but there's a full moon in a week, and it's going to be a supermoon. I think that will help Scott revive and recharge quicker."

Stiles felt suddenly cold all over, his heart sinking. He'd forgotten about the full moon. _Oh crap. He was in so much trouble._

Lydia pressed on, the already static laden connection steadily getting worse and worse as they got farther and farther away. "Listen," she said, "I'm starting to lose you. We may not be able to communicate again for a while, we're getting out of range and it's not going to be safe for you anyway. So this is the plan for now: stay alive for the next week. We'll come back for you just before moonset after the next full moon. Scott will be at his strongest then and that'll be our best chance. We'll be in touch again shortly before to arrange a place for the breach. Good luck," she bid them, sounding worried despite firm determination of her words.

"Yes, ma'am!" Stiles mock-saluted, even though Lydia couldn't see him. "See you then. Be safe." There was no further reply but static and after a minute Stiles returned the ear bud to Theo. "Right. Well, you heard the lady, people, all we have to do is stay alive."

"Piece of cake," Theo agreed. They all knew it wasn't, but seemed collectively determined to pretend that their current, dire situation was no big deal, as if they could make it so by sheer force of will.

Trying to survive in a hostile town that was now on the alert and actively hunting them was going to be no small order, and Stiles had other problems to consider as well. A week without pills this close to his cycle was bad enough, but to top it off with a full moon, and a supermoon to at that? He was screwed. Utterly screwed. There was no _way_ he'd make it through that.

Stiles rested his arms on his knees and let his head hang, feeling suddenly a little dizzy. After a minute, Theo silently offered him his canteen and a stick of jerky. Stiles had lost most of his own supplies in his earlier fight and flight. He looked up balefully into Theo's concerned, stupidly well put together face and almost refused simply on principle. Practicality won out, however and he reluctantly accepted instead. The water and protein helped ease some of the dizziness he was experiencing, even if not the sense of impending doom hanging over him.

"Theo," Malia said quietly after a minute or two. "You aren't like us. You can cross mountain ash. You don't have to stay."

Stiles had had the same thought and he side-eyed Theo with some curiosity as he chewed slowly on the salty jerky.

"And miss out on all the fun?" Theo smiled. "Nah. I'll stick with you. Besides, mountain ash isn't _all_ that's out there," he pointed out practically. "There's plenty of other defenses and you can bet security is going to be three times as tight now. We'll be better off together."

Stiles supposed that was true, he also supposed it wouldn't look very good to Scott and the others if Theo abandoned them and came back alone, if that was something that he cared about. He had a pretty hard time pinning down exactly what Theo _did_ care about, to be honest. He could be very ... confusing.

Theo fixed a warm but slightly sarcastic smile on Stiles, causing some more of those confusing feelings to stir around uneasily inside him. "Assuming, I get to live now, of course?" he added dryly. "Since Scott's okay, everyone _else_ escaped just fine and _we're_ the only ones who are screwed?"

Stiles scowled at him, shifting and trying to banish the more confusing stirrings in his ridiculously unhelpful gut. "Maybe," he grumped. "But you're still not off the hook. I may not understand what, but I _know_ you are up to _something._ "

Theo just smiled indulgently and shook his head, giving Stiles an _okay, fine, have it your way_ type shrug.

Mason looked confused and Malia looked distinctly skeptical. Stiles could tell they all thought he was being entirely too bitchy and unreasonable with Theo, and maybe he was. He wasn't so sure himself anymore. Was the mistrust he felt for the other boy as based in reality as he thought it was? Or was at least some of it a reaction to the unwanted and completely untenable attraction he felt towards him? 

_"Well, great,"_ Stiles thought with an inward sigh, _"this week is just going to be a whole **barrel** of fun, I can tell already." _


	2. In all chaos, there is calculation

A week later found the five fugitives still stuck in Havre, having (predictably) failed to find any feasible way of escape other than waiting and hoping their friends would come through for them. Liam had fully recovered and they had managed to fake their own demise early on, fooling the hunters searching for them into assuming they were dead. The whole city was still on alert, but the ruse had enabled them to make it as long as they had without discovery. Days of hiding and inactivity while under the constant threat of danger were taking their toll though; they were all starting to feel like crawling the walls.

Stiles was trying not to lose his shit. They were stuck in enemy territory, he was completely un-medicated, due for his cycle, and there would be a full moon tonight. It was like fate had intentionally decided to pile on and crap all over him.

He was agitated and restless, already able to feel the heat prickling under his skin. He had felt it for days now. He'd been holding out as best he could, but he knew the moon would trigger him for sure. A full moon heat after over a week off his suppressants was undoubtedly going to hit _hard._

He'd done his best to hide his condition from his companions. The fact that they were all restless to varying degrees due to their situation and the impending supermoon made it easier for him, but he was pretty sure his companions could tell he was more off than usual. He was extra snappish, snarky and explosive and even he knewhe was behaving badly. He was pretty sure the others occasionally wanted to throttle him, but they thankfully seemed to attribute his agitation to the stress of their situation.

Stiles rubbed his aching arms. The skin there was starting to sting fiercely, but it was a small price to pay to keep his secrets to himself.

"Hey, what's going on with you?" Malia's voice pulled Stiles out of the reverie he hadn't realized he'd fallen into. "Are you okay?" her questioning gaze was intent.

He gave a start and attempted to shrug carelessly, cursing himself for being so transparent. "Yeah, just thinking about tonight," he said, speaking enough of the truth that she wouldn't read it as a lie. He glanced out the window towards the currently sun-bright sky. "Just the moon, you know," he said vaguely.

Malia nodded, settling her shoulder against the wall. "I feel it too," she agreed. "It's too bad it's happening while we're some place like this. Would have been a great night for a run." Her gaze darted across the room towards the others and then back. "Are you worried about Liam's control issues?" she asked. Liam could, of course, hear her perfectly well. The words were not intended meanly, but tact was _not_ Malia's strong suit.

"Nah," Stiles said confidently, fooling exactly no one. "That was forever ago. I'm sure he's going to be just fine. Right, Liam?"

Liam smiled somewhat anxiously and gave a thumbs-up. He was a good kid and he tried so hard, Stiles respected that. Everyone had their own issues when you came down to it, something Stiles knew better than most. Mason clapped his friend reassuringly on the shoulder, and Stiles thought that as long as they had each other, both the young wolves just might make it through this okay.

"See?" Stiles said with forced cheer. "No problems." He hoped it was true and wished this wasn't one more way he was going to let everyone down. He'd promised he'd watch out for Liam, but he probably wasn't going to be able to keep that promise, adding one more failing to an already distressingly long list.  

_===_

_"Liam's going to be fine but he's been through a lot and depending on how this goes I might be pretty out of it. Just ... keep an eye on him, okay? When I'm not around? He looks up to you," Scott said, fixing his friend with a serious look. He had reservations about taking Liam and Mason on the Havre raid. He was protective of both the young wolves, and Liam's control issues could be a problem, but they needed all the hands they could get and there would be no keeping them away, anyway._

_Stiles squinted at him. "Liam looks up to_ **you _,_** _Scott, pretty sure he just tolerates me."_

_Scott shook his head. "You're good for him," he insisted. "Liam is struggling to find his center after everything he's lost. I know what that's like and so do you .You're the one who helped_ me _find solid ground when_ I _was sixteen and had no idea what to do with myself. I'm sorry to put this on you, but I'm worried about him and there's just no one I trust more." Scott's smile had been genuine and open and of course Stiles couldn't refuse him, he never could._

_"Okay, okay, sold. I'll keep an eye on mini-hulk," he joked, slinging an arm around Scott's shoulders. "What would you do without me?" His smile gave no indication of how bittersweet his best friend's words were to him. Scott saw him as so strong and competent, so trustworthy. Stiles knew he could never let him down, never let him see what he had become, or how much everything had changed since they were sixteen._

_===_

"Well you're in a mood about _something_ ," Malia murmured, once again tearing Stiles from his thoughts, although this time she was keeping her voice low enough for the conversation to be private. "Is it Theo, then? Do you really think he's going to betray us? He hasn't acted like it, and there's been plenty of opportunities," she pointed out with a thoughtful frown.

Theo was currently stationed out top, taking his turn at keeping watch, but Stiles kept his own voice as soft as Malia's anyway, not wanting to broadcast his paranoia to Liam and Mason who didn't need any more potential stressors tonight. "I don’t know," he admitted with a sigh. "I really don't. Just ... just be careful of him, okay?"

"Okay," she agreed, not looking terribly convinced, but apparently willing to at least not totally reject his concerns. Stiles appreciated that.

"I'd feel better if we were able to raise the others on the radio," Malia confessed, as if confiding her concerns might draw reciprocal action from Stiles.

"Me too," Stiles agreed. "We'll have to try again later. Maybe they're just not in range yet." He knew that was a thin hope.

They'd tried to raise the rest of the pack earlier that morning without success. There was a lot of weird interference which _could_ mean they were just out of range, but also might mean there was some type of signal jamming going on. That would not bode well for them.

"Well, at least it's almost over now, right?" Malia made a genuine if somewhat stilted attempt at being encouraging. "By this time tomorrow, maybe we'll be out this place."

_By this time tomorrow, I might not be **sane** anymore, _Stiles thought. For one crazy moment, he almost told her, despite knowing there wasn't anything she could do about it, and that it would be hideously unfair of him to put her in a position of even feeling like she needed to try just by knowing. He stopped himself in time and tried for a smile and a nod instead. "Yeah, here's hoping."

Malia frowned, as if she could tell there was something else on his mind, but just then Theo came dropping down swiftly through the roof hatch.

"We've got company!" he warned, making all of them jump to their feet. "Two chimeras just entered the building on the ground floor."

"Fuck," Stiles swore as they all rapidly gathered up what little gear they had. "Think they know we're here?"

"I think they'd have brought a lot more of their friends if they did," Theo replied. "They look like they're working their way down the street, probably just doing some kind of grid sweep, but if they intend to search this building they'll pick up on our scent sooner enough."

"We should go," Mason said, already poised near one of the ventilation shafts that would take them through the wall of the shared attic space and into the building next door.

"Wait, if they get our trail, they'll just follow us," Malia pointed out. "Even if we try to muddle it, they'll know we were here recently. They'll realize we aren't dead and they'll have the whole guard down here combing through this section of the city in no time."

"She's right," Theo agreed. "They find out we're alive _now_ and the whole city will go into extra heightened lockdown _right_ before we're set to try to escape."

Stiles knew they were both right. "Okay, so we make sure that doesn’t happen," he said.

"How?" Mason asked, squinting a little as if he already suspected the answer.

"We don't let them report back in," Liam responded, sounding like he found the idea attractive. This close to a full moon they were all spoiling for a fight. All except Mason, possibly, who was one of the most chill werewolves Stiles had ever met.

It was almost disappointingly easy to get the drop on the two chimeras. Whatever had caused them to search this building, they were not overly on guard. It wasn't too hard to take them by surprise and the kanima venom darts dropped them with almost no struggle.

Stiles would much rather have gotten into a good knockdown, drag out fight, maybe it would have relieved some of the tense energy running through him; but this way was much safer for them. The faster they took the enemy out, the less danger there was of them calling for help.

Dragging them to the basement, they tied the chimeras up securely, binding them to thick support beams with anything and everything they could find. The chimeras weren't that much older than they were. The young woman hissed at them, angry and frustrated, but the young man with too many teeth smirked darkly at them, despite his currently helpless position.

"I knew you weren't dead, Theo. Not you. You're too slick for that, aren't you? But you're in trouble _nooow_ ," he sing-songed, not sounding entirely sane. "Should have stuck with being Doctor's pet. Just wait 'til we tell them you're still alive. They'll make a special chamber just for you," the young man taunted darkly.

Theo's fists curled at his sides and Stiles heard his heart rate kick up.

"Hey, shut up," Stiles snapped, slapping the chimera back-hand. The dude's insanity was annoying, okay?  

The man just licked his lip and grinned. "Aw, don't feel left out. They'll do something special for all of you, and if you're very lucky, maybe in a couple years they'll even let you die."

"I don't get you," Mason said, shaking his head in pained disgust. "You're one of us, man!  How can you work for _them?_   Knowing what they _do?_ "

"We're not like _you_ ," the man with the teeth spat disgustedly. "We're scientifically enhanced, not some random freaks of nature. We're the future, the new master race; we're better, faster, _stronger,_ right Theo?" There was something in that question, in his tone, in his eyes that unsettled Stiles.

Theo caught the boy's throat in his grip and squeezed. "So they would have us believe," he said flatly. There was something in his eyes ... a warning? Or just anger?  Stiles tugged on his sleeve and after a moment Theo let go, leaving the other boy coughing.

Liam huffed. "Yeah, sure, okay, except for how us freaks of nature just totally got the drop on your enhanced asses," he pointed out smugly. "Seriously though... you know they're using you, right? They don't care about you, you're _tools_ to them. You should come with us. You should be _free_." His voice had taken a more earnest tone and he shook his head, a little of that sweet nature that Stiles knew Scott saw in him peeking out.

The woman snorted, her hard voice a little less insane than her companions' and a little more resigned. "Don't be a fool, kid. The majority of your kind will never accept us. We'll be as anathema to them as we are to most of the humans in this town."

"We would," Mason said earnestly. "We'd take you."

Stiles made a face. "Yeah, I mean, we took _Theo,_ " he agreed.

"Oh, but Theo always gets what he wants," the man rasped cryptically, his voice a little scratchy now and his smile still several cards short of a deck as it fixed on Theo.

In a way, Stiles thought that might be true. Stiles hadn't known him that long, but Theo did seem pretty good at always landing on his feet.  He'd shown up in the Preserve, the current resistance stronghold, some months before. He brought with him the story of what the Argents and the Doctors were doing in Havre and told them about the secret Research and Detainment Center where captive werewolves were tortured and subjected to hideous experimentation and equally unlucky humans were being turned into powerful chimera warriors. Theo was one of the first successful results of that process, he claimed, before they started breeding more blind loyalty and obedience into the strain. He had served the Doctors and the Argents for several years, until, according to him, he'd finally been able to slip his leash and get away.

Theo had come to them with his tale of horror and misuse, wanting to defect and bringing with him his knowledge of Havre and the Center as a gift. It was intelligence they couldn't possibly ignore and Scott had taken him in easily enough, much to Stiles' disapproval, but that was an old story with them. Scott was all heart and Stiles was all suspicion. It worked out, usually. Scott wanted to trust Theo, but years of fighting had taught him to be cautious, too. At least in the beginning, he had privately agreed with Stiles that it wouldn't hurt to keep an eye on Theo and make sure his intentions were as honest as they seemed. By now, however, Theo had engrained himself pretty well into the pack and Stiles was pretty sure he was the only left who was still actually keeping that particular watch.

"You don't know what you're up against," the woman said flatly. "Your resistance cannot hope to win. You're betting the wrong horse Theo, you should have stayed with us. We still _need_ the Doctors. The humans will take this country, but no one will go after us with them around. Even the Argents aren't in too great a hurry to cross them."

Stiles had assumed the Doctors worked for the Argents, an assumption he thought the hunters themselves probably shared, but now he was starting to wonder just how true it really was and whether their goals were really very much in line at all. Then there were the chimeras to consider. He'd thought them bio engineered watch dogs, little more than slaves. That was the impression Theo had given, but some of what he was hearing now didn't jive with that. Crazy teeth guy talked like they thought themselves not slaves, but rather a superior species; one that was, perhaps, biding its time until the lower races wore themselves out fighting each other? Or was that his paranoia talking again?

"I don't think I am," Theo responded to her. "I think you're not seeing the big picture, or what the Doctors really intend for us." His voice was cool, rebutting but not attempting to convince her.

"Doesn't really matter. You're all going to be caught, probably sooner than later. There's no way out of Havre for you, you know," she said it more like a fact than a taunt. "You might as well give up now. If you think you can tunnel your way out like you did before, forget it. They're not going to let that happen a second time."

"Oh no? Was easy enough last time. This place is like Swiss cheese. We can get in and out whenever we want," Stiles bluffed, his tone intentionally taunting. He wanted to know more about what counter measures might have been taken against them and hoped to goad the prisoners into revealing more.

"Throwing down a little extra mountain ash is hardly what I'd call something to worry about," Theo agreed with equal derision, obviously catching onto Stiles' play and going along with it.

The woman wasn't so easily snared, but Mr. Crazy Teeth was a different story. "Oh yeah? How about _two_ lines of mountain ash, genius," the man retorted. "Your mundane shifter asses aren't going to be able to make it through _that,_ " he scoffed, glaring at Stiles and the other non-chimeras. "Not to _mention_ the secondary incendiary ring, the choppers and road blocks from here to Greenbow. You try to go outside, you are gonna be _toast!"_ he cackled.

"Shut up!" the woman snapped to her companion, aware of the valuable information he was giving up. The man fell sullenly silent then, but it was already too late of course.

Stiles rocked on his heels, processing what they'd just learned. They were going to have to warn Scott and the others about the extra, unexpected hurtles and work them into their plan. It was good information to have.

"Right, well, good chat," Stiles said brightly as he jabbed the man with his last remaining kanima dart. "Now you two just sit tight, this will wear off eventually and then you can scamper back off to whatever hole you crawled out of."

Following his lead, the others used up the last of their kanima venom on the two captive chimeras as well, trying to make sure they would stay immobilized for as long as possible. Once they were no longer paralyzed, they'd be able to break out of their bonds and the locked basement pretty easily. They couldn't afford for that to happen before tomorrow morning.

"It's not going to last long enough," Theo said quietly as they locked the only door to the basement and piled whatever they could find against the door. "Chimeras process kanima venom faster than normal. It took them barely minutes to recover from the single doses we gave them in the alley the night of the break. Even with as much as we gave them this time, we've got... what, hours?  Maybe?  It's not enough time."

Stiles didn't want to concede that he had a point, but he did. "Okay, so stay here and watch the door," he told Theo. "Look, we need to try to get word to the others about what we've just learned. We should spread out to cover more ground and have a better chance of getting a signal. Malia, Liam, Mason, split up, try your radios in different places, try higher ground, try _everything,_ see if you can get through. If they plan to be in the area by moonset, they've got to already be somewhere nearby and there has to be _somewhere_ in this whole bloody city that we can get a signal."

"If any of us make contact, we pass on what we found out about the changes in the defenses and try to find out as much as we can about their plans," Malia agreed. "With all the interference, we don't know when we'll have another chance to talk and we have to at least know what area to be in at moonset."

"Meet back up in two hours at the Falcon's Nest?" Mason suggested, naming another one of their hiding places. It was clear they couldn't come back here.

Everyone nodded their agreement, but Liam looked curiously at Stiles. "What are you going to do?"

Stiles sighed. "I'm going to see if I can filch some wolfsbane to use on our friends downstairs to keep them out longer. With so many hunters around it can't be too hard to find, right?"

Liam unconsciously rubbed his side. "Won't that ... kill them? Not that I care," he added quickly, as if trying to sound tough.

"No," Theo put in. "Our bodies are able to process wolfsbane. It will make them ill, maybe prolong the effects of the kanima venom, but it won't kill them."

Stiles had suspected that, but the confirmation was good to have. He looked at Theo speculatively. "Do the Argents realize that their precious scientist buddies are creating a race of shifters immune to most of their favorite weapons?" he asked dryly.

Theo smiled and shrugged meaningfully. "I don't know, but what do you think?"

"I think we better get moving. And let's try to cover our trails as much as possible, don't need any more random chimeras tripping over our scents." Stiles said as all but Theo started towards the exit.

Malia paused before she left, fixing Stiles with a worried frown. "What if anyone else stumbles on this building before we leave and finds the two in the basement, or smells us? Our scent is all over this place."

"Risk we're going to have to take," Stiles said simply. "Nothing we can do about it." There was, actually, but he didn't feel like explaining.

After they all split up about their errands, Stiles doubled back. Creeping back into the building, careful to stay away from where they'd left Theo guarding the other chimeras, he drew a complex pattern of charms on the one of the building's inner foundation walls and invoked them. It was nearly as crude as the tattoos he'd seen on those hunters the other night, but it would serve to at least muddle, if not truly suppress scents in the building for the next day or two. Chalk was a weak medium and he wasn't nearly strong enough to spell the entire building. If someone were determined to search this place, they'd figure out something was up pretty quick, but he hoped that this small effort might at least keep them from casual or accidental discovery.

This was almost the only bit of magic he knew but it served him well. Only a handful of people knew he knew how to do it. Given what he used it for most frequently, he tried to keep it that way. 

++++++++

The door to the basement slid quietly open and a figure made his way down the stairs and over to the two bound chimeras.

"Theo," the male chimera greeted with his patently unpleasant smile. "Lose your new friends so soon? Or did you get tired of them already and drop them like you dropped us?"

Theo shrugged. "I haven't dropped anyone, but you wouldn't understand that, would you? You know, you're not really much of a loss. I never said anything, but you were always kind of an ass," he said casually before ripping the other chimera's throat open.

Theo prowled around to the other side of the post, were the girl was looking at him with dark, frightened eyes. "Helena," he sighed. "Now you, I'm actually sorry about. I _liked_ you, 'Lena. I wanted you to be part of the future, of _our_ future. But you'll tell the Doctors on me if I let you live," he said regretfully.

The girl struggled to shake her head but was unable to do so around the paralytic in her system.

Theo clucked his tongue and caressed her cheek. "No, no, it's no good, I know you will, and I didn't go to all this trouble to make them think I'm dead just for you to ruin it all. If they know I'm alive, they'll eventually come after me, and I can't have that, not until I'm ready for them.  You understand, right?" he said in a falsely conciliatory tone.  "I have to think about the good of the many, here. About the future of our kind and who's going to lead them. The Doctors don't protect us, 'Lena, they _use_ us. They created us to be gods, but hold us back from achieving our true potential. I need an army, I need _power,_ enough power to take them out of the picture for good. With them gone there will be nothing that can stop us. I'm not going to get that power from the Argents and I'm not going to find it here... but I know where I will."

"Theo..." Helena whispered.

"Shh... it's okay," he murmured, cupping her cheek with one hand as he opened her throat quickly and cleanly with the other. "It's okay."

++++++++

Stiles was done with his spell work and ready to head back out to find some wolfsbane, when some impulse made him detour back by the room that contained the basement entry. He intended to just flit by it, to... to do what, he wasn't really sure. To check on Theo, he supposed. It had seemed natural to leave him there to guard the Chimeras at the time, but now he was starting to wonder if that had been a mistake. If he _was_ still in league with either the Doctors or the Argents, giving him time alone with enemy agents was not really the greatest plan, was it?

If he were honest, Stiles had almost convinced himself that his paranoia was unfounded as everyone else thought it was and he didn't _really_ expect to find anything other than Theo still cooling his heels outside the locked door. So he felt an unpleasant kick in the gut when he saw the things they'd shoved in front of the door pushed aside and the dark doorway standing open and unguarded.

His whole body tensing and a hundred dark suspicions immediately crowding his mind, Stiles crept as quietly as he could through the basement door.

He wasn't sure what he expected to find. Theo colluding with the other chimeras?  The other chimeras already freed and gone, all of them off to raise the alarm? Whatever he'd expected to find, it wasn't Theo standing over two dead bodies, his claws stained with blood as he methodically tore at the ropes binding them.

Stiles made no noise, but Theo apparently sensed his presence because he started and wheeled around, gaze darting immediately to Stiles' position at the top of the stairs. Something uncertain and hesitant flashed through Theo's expression, as if this wasn't something he was prepared to deal with and he wasn't sure what to do.

"Well," he said finally, letting go of the ropes and stepping back. "I guess I don't have to make it look like they were trying to escape now, do I?" he said, deciding to brazen it out. He wiped his hands on a rag.

Stiles slowly descended the stairs to the bottom. "No, I guess not," he said flatly.

"You know it had to be done, right?" Theo said, a hint of challenge in his tone. "The only thing keeping us alive and giving us a _hope_ of getting out of here is that they think we're dead. We lose that, we lose _everything._ The venom was already starting to wear off. Wolfsbane wasn't going to help, even if you found any. You don't know these people like I do. We couldn't take the chance. It was necessary."

"It was murder," Stiles countered, voice still flat and cool. "They were _tied up_ , Theo."

Theo dropped the rag and regarded Stiles. "Doesn't meant they weren't a threat. You going to tell the others?" he asked. His voice was calm, but there was something behind his eyes that read like danger. Stiles wasn't afraid though. He'd _welcome_ a fight at this point, even with Theo ... maybe _especially_ with Theo.

" _Yeah_ , I'm going to tell the others," Stiles said with a hint of incredulity. "I'm gonna tell Scott too. _Murder,_ Theo, it's kind of a big thing."

"Okay," Theo agreed with far too much ease and good grace. "Maybe you're right. I feel I did what I had to to protect us, but maybe we should let Scott decide that. Maybe we should do that for a lot of things. Maybe all of us should come clean. I'm sure Scott would be _very_ interested to know about those two totally human, totally _civilian_ bodies you left in the storm drains too, huh?"

Stiles felt cold all over, an icy-hot mix of rage and dread bubbling up inside his chest and painting red across his vision.  

"But then, they weren't the first, right?" Theo prodded, poking directly at the raw wounds Stiles thought no one else could see. "I see a lot more of what goes on than anyone seems to think, Stiles. You think maybe everybody would like to know about Dumont? About the assassin you pushed off the mausoleum? What about the three dead guys in Carte? One of their own grenades that time, right? Nice, didn't even have to get your hands dirty. Oh, or how about the Monroes? Scott was so sure he turned them around, set them on the right path. He probably has no idea that the only reason they didn't totally betray all of you was because you took them out before they could. I wonder how knowing _that_ would make him feel?"

Stiles closed the distance between them before he even realized he was moving, his fist flying and connecting hard with Theo's face. Theo stumbled backwards and Stiles tackled him, bearing him down to the ground and punching him again, and again. He slammed Theo's head hard against the cement floor, too much hurt and angry adrenaline flooding him for him to even notice that Theo wasn't fighting back.

"Shut up! Shut _up!_ " Stiles seethed, his voice hitching with what might have been an angry sob. "You don't know what you're talking about!" he hissed. "You don't have any fucking idea! It wasn't like I _planned_ it! I caught them in the act and they tried to _kill_ me. I didn't have a choice! I didn't _want_ to hurt any of those people, but they didn't give me a fucking choice, not any of them. I did what I had to!"

Theo was remarkably calm in the face of Stiles' anger. Blood trickled from his nose and split lip as he looked up at Stiles with an implacable gaze that made Stiles want to hit him again.

"Of course you did. I know that. I don't think you did anything wrong, Stiles, or that you have anything to feel guilty about, that's why I never said anything," Theo said earnestly, fixing Stiles with an intense gaze. "I understand what being at war _means,_ unlike some people. You can't have a war without casualties; you _can't_ save everybody. You get that Stiles, it's just a pity Scott doesn't. We'd all have a much better chance of winning this stupidly unequal and lopsided fight if our leader didn't have such unrealistic goals and standards."

Stiles scowled down at him, still holding Theo's collar in a tight grip as he straddled him. "If you think that, why did you join _us_?" he demanded. "There's plenty of other alphas who would agree, and plenty of packs you could have gone to."

"Because this one needed me," Theo said, shaking his head and snuffling back blood as his nose mended. "You're the front lines, the face of the resistance, but your pack's a damn mess Stiles and you know it. This war _needs_ people like you and me, people who are willing to get things _done,_ or we'll lose everything. But you need stop lying to yourself and see where you really stand. Have you even thought about what happens when this is over?  Do you really think Scott will keep you by his side if we prevail and he becomes the new head alpha? Or will you have too much blood on your hands for him by then? I know a thing or two about being used Stiles, about being someone else's tool. We're the ones willing to get our hands dirty for something good, but if we open ourselves to the judgment of people who will never understand ... do you think there's going to be any place for us when it's over?"

"There shouldn't be," Stiles said simply. He punched Theo again because it felt very satisfying to do so. "If you think striving not to be a monster is an unrealistic goal, maybe you should have stuck with your Argent buddies. Maybe this war _is_ screwed up enough to need people like us, but the _world_ needs people like Scott."

Theo brought the back of his hand gingerly to his nose, wincing and dabbing at the blood there. He smiled, understanding flickering behind his eyes as if he'd suddenly pieced something together. "You're protecting him," he said with certainty. "You take care of the dirty work so he can keep his hands and his ideals clean."

Stiles' lips pressed together into a tight line. His heart was thudding in something that wasn't truly anger or fear anymore, more like crazy, mixed up adrenaline. His hormones were fluctuating wildly, his rage kicking off the first damning fingers of precursory heat and setting them free to rake through his insides and shiver along under his skin.

"If that's what it takes, then, yes," he grit out. "I can do this. I can do what needs to be done. I can destroy shit and bring chaos, I've always been good at that. What I _can't_ do is hold the fucking country together afterwards and try to bring something good, something _actually_ worth living in out of the ashes of this whole fucking nightmare. Scott _can_ do that, that's what _he's_ good at. Scott can build the kind of world people ought to live in. This fight may need someone with blood on their hands, but the country's going to need someone without, because God knows, it's had enough of that already."

Badly on edge, Stiles punched Theo again, because his flesh felt _good_ against Stiles' flesh, almost as good as it felt to find an outlet for all the hurt and anger that had been locked up so tight inside him for so long. His pulse was racing and he was unconsciously starting to grind down against Theo as he straddled him. Looking at Theo, sprawled on the ground and bloody, Stiles felt suddenly, _insanely_ aware of just how disgustingly attractive he was. Stiles' breath came in short, panting gasps between his lips. His body was starting to betray him and it was suddenly an actual struggle to not roll himself against Theo and grind down harder against his hips. _Oh fuck, oh fuck..._

With one, abrupt motion, Theo grabbed Stiles' arms and rolled them over, flipping Stiles onto his back underneath him and grinding down deliberately against him, their hips rolling together. "And what about you? What do _you_ need, Stiles?" he murmured, his voice suddenly lower and silkier than it had been. Theo wiped blood from his healed face and leaned down, catching Stiles' open, panting mouth in a totally unexpected kiss.

At first, Stiles was too startled for his mind to properly process how to respond to this sudden development. In its absence, his body took over for him, making him momentarily responsive to the pleasurable contact. He allowed Theo into his mouth, their tongues tangling and there was a surreal, breathless moment of kissing and grinding and rapidly accelerating heartbeats, their bodies pressing and rocking into one another, before Stiles' rationality finally caught up with what was happening and reasserted itself.   

He threw Theo off him and rolled away. His hands were shaking as he pressed them against the ground, struggling unsteadily back to his feet. He felt heat surging up inside him and knew what was happening. He was in the first pangs of his upcoming cycle and he didn't have much time left now, damn it _all._

"Get away from me," Stiles croaked, his voice a lot hoarser than he might have liked. "We don't ... there's no time. This is all a stupid waste of time. What's done is done and all this crap won't mean _shit_ if we don't make it out of here. We don’t need wolfsbane anymore, so I'm going to head to the rendezvous. I don't give a shit what you do."  With that, he turned and left.

Theo wiped blood from his mouth with a smile, then pushed himself up to his feet and followed.


	3. Slipping off the course that we prepared

No one had been able to make contact with anyone via radio by the time of their rendezvous, so they decided to keep trying, splitting into teams and heading out again in search of signal. Stiles did not mention anything about the dead chimeras to the others, but he made damn sure that he and Theo did not end up on the same team.

Finally, as evening approached, Liam made contact from the very easternmost edge of the city. It was Derek who answered, but Scott almost immediately took the radio from him, sounding both haggard and relieved. "Liam! You're okay? Is everyone still okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, we're fine," Liam assured quickly, unable to hide his own relief at hearing the older wolf's voice. "Stiles and Mason are here with me, Malia and Theo are okay too, we split up to try and get a signal, there's been a lot of interference."

Scott sounded glad, but he didn't sound good. Stiles could hear the strain in his voice even from a distance. His voice was hoarse, like he had a bad cold, and he was wheezing a little. He certainly sounded too weak to be considering tackling a double ring of mountain ash, but when Stiles voiced his concern, Scott insisted he was fine and that he'd be ready to go by moonset tomorrow morning. He pointed out that it wasn't as if he was going to have to hold it long term like last time, this would be a much quicker in and out. They'd already found a place where they thought they'd have the best chance of slipping through unseen. 

Liam passed on what they had learned about the new defenses and together they adjusted their plans accordingly. If the double lines worried Scott, he didn't let on, but of course, he wouldn't. They agreed on a time and location and then signed off. 

Stiles, Malia, Theo, Mason and Liam found a new hiding place as close as possible to the designated extraction point, and then the only thing left to do was wait and ride out the coming moon cycle.

Easier said than done, Stiles thought. The full moon under these circumstances was going to be trying for all of them. He knew somebody should be there for Liam especially, but it couldn't be him, not tonight. He wasn't going to be any good for anyone tonight, just the opposite in fact. Fortunately Mason seemed to be doing a really good job of anchoring his friend, and with Malia to watch over the both of them, Stiles wasn't too worried.

He _was_ increasingly agitated for other reasons though, the sensation growing, like ants crawling across his skin as moonrise approached. Finally he left, knowing he couldn't hold out much longer and couldn't stick around, couldn't subject the others to what's going to happen to him or the danger it would bring. Anyway, he very much did not want them to see. It was so frustrating, because in only a little over 12 hours and they have their chance... but he wasn't going to make it that long, he could feel that already.

Malia wanted to know where he was going, of course, he'd already thought of that. He told her he was going back to where they'd left the two chimeras in the basement, just to be safe. They couldn't risk everything getting spoiled now, right? He studiously avoided looking anywhere near Theo as he said this, and he chose his words carefully. He never actually said he was checking on the two chimeras, which would have read as an obvious lie, he just said he was going back to where they'd left them, which was true, and let Malia assume the rest. The building was almost clear across the city from them, they could reasonably expect him to be gone for a while.

"Are you sure that's a good idea? You don't look good," she said bluntly. "I'll go with you."

"No." Stiles shook his head. "It'll take me a while to get there and you need to be here for Liam and Mason in case things get dicey with the supermoon. We can't risk drawing any attention now."

"Okay," Malia agreed reluctantly. "But the same goes for you. Be careful, all right?"

Stiles mustered a reassuring smile. "You got it. It's fine, some air will do me good. I'll be back as soon as I can." Again, it wasn't a lie, because there was no real quantifier on "as soon as he could", was there? That could be before moonset, or, it could be never. Stiles was trying to stay optimistic, telling himself it was entirely possible that he could get his issues under control and be back before they were supposed to leave, but his pragmatic side was getting in the way, asking him who he was trying to kid.

"Hey, listen..." Stiles paused in the doorway. "Everything's going to be fine, but if for some unforeseen reason it's not, if something happens and I don't come back, don't wait for me, okay? If I'm not back by moonset, then I'm dead and you need to get everyone else out of here," he said seriously.

Malia looked newly alarmed, as he'd feared she would, and he tried to soften the warning. "I'm just saying, after what happened that got us into this mess in the first place, I think we need to have a clear agreement on this. Who knows what could happen with any of us between now and then? If one of us can't make it, the others still have to, and no feeling guilty. Yeah?"

Malia seemed to see sense in that and agreed reluctantly, as he'd known she would, bless that practical side of her. Still, her eyes followed him with concern as he left.

Theo's eyes followed him too.

Stiles intended to go across town and perhaps find somewhere near the Castle to hide as he tried to make it through what the night would bring, but quickly realized he wasn't going to make it that far before the heat he could feel spreading through him like a fever took him. He settled from getting as far away from his companions and from any other signs of life as he could.

His arms were starting to sting like they were literally on fire and he pushed up his sleeves, unsurprised to see the formerly invisible tattoos on his arms now glowing a faint, but visible red. The intricate wards had been doing their job up to now, concealing, not his whole scent, which would have made him seem suspicious to other weres, but rather only the part of his scent that was going to be a problem. Without the wars, everyone would have known what was up with him days ago... or come to that, _years_ ago.

It was extremely delicate magic and it worked great ... up until his cycle truly started. Then the charm-work failed and could become downright painful, as was happening now. It was like his body rejected them and their attempts to mask it's desperate biological signal for what it wanted. When they started to glow like this, Stiles knew they were completely offline and he was pumping out _come hither_ pheromones like ... well, like a randy animal in heat. That was not good. The last thing he needed was for a bunch of chimeras to catch his scent and come to check it out. He wasn't sure if they would react to him and be drawn to his heat scent like normal shifters not, but he wasn't eager to find out. That was another excellent reason why he needed to be well away from the others. If trouble did come, he didn't need to bring it to them.

Stiles quickly availed himself of the next suitably damaged and abandoned structure he could find. He supposed they were lucky that this city had apparently seen so many hard times over the past fifty years or so. There were a _lot_ of abandoned, crumbling buildings, especially in the now almost completely unused and decaying industrial sections of the city.

He could already feel the claws of need beginning to dig into him with a vengeance as he scrambled in through a broken window and stumbled through several trash and graffiti strewn rooms. He found a room with an unbroken, cloudy window that would let him see the sky and sank to the floor, shivering. He wasn't sure why being able to see the moon when it rose helped, but it did, a little. As much as anything ever helped when he felt like this.

Hugging himself, Stiles started shivering almost uncontrollably, cold perspiration gathering on his skin and making his clothes feel clammy. He regretted not having access to any of his usual restraints or aides. He could already tell this was going to be hell. He didn't know if he could do it. Maybe he should have gotten over his embarrassment enough to tell Malia, she could have at least tied him down so he wouldn't do something stupid. When it got bad, he knew he could lose perspective along with common sense.  He couldn't guarantee that he wouldn't lose it and go hunting for someone, _anyone_ to ease the pain, as reckless and deadly as that would be. He mustn't, he told himself. He _mustn't_. It wasn't only himself he'd be putting in danger, it was everyone else, too. They could _not_ attract attention until morning!

The pills he took, or was supposed to take, normally kept his cycles regular and relatively mild. His heats usually lasted several days and were decidedly unpleasant, but he'd learned to cope. Lacking meds and under the influence of the moon, however... this one was going to be a lot worse.

The shakes were soon replaced by a blossoming inferno of feverish heat. He felt like the room was becoming an oven and he was roasting slowly. Panting for breath, he stripped naked, trying to cool down and to escape the touch of his own clothing, which was too much and yet not enough on his increasingly sensitive, needy skin. 

Stiles sat naked, pushed into the corner and tried fervently not touch himself. He knew from experience that it would do nothing but feed a fire he couldn't easily quench alone, but the urge was so strong after a few minutes he couldn't fight it anymore. He gripped his straining, aching erection and pumped it hard, almost viciously, squirming and groaning at the fissions of pleasure and sensation that surged through him at the contact, leaving him wanting more, more, _more._ His hole was starting to throb, his cheeks and thighs dampening with slick, his insides cramping.

Breath rasping between flushed, parted lips Stiles tugged and stroked at his throbbing dick, his heels working against the ground, his perspiration slicked body writhing rhythmically.

That was how Theo found him.

Stiles was too focused on his own problems to hear his approach until Theo was standing a few feet away, regarding him with bright, interested eyes.

"You're in heat," he observed. "I thought so."

Nudity was not much of a taboo in werewolf culture, but Stiles still scowled at the interloper and pulled back further into his corner, reluctantly letting go of his dick and curling his arms around his knees in some half baked attempt to be less pathetic than he was.

"What're you doing here?" Stiles panted.

"Looking for you, obviously. Didn't seem like any of us should be out alone on a night like this, right?"  

"Great, you found me, now go away."

Theo didn't leave, but he didn't approach either. He maintained the small distance between them and crouched down, putting himself on Stiles' level. "The others don't know you're omega," he said, the words sounding more like a statement than a question.

Stiles growled because he hated that word and all the archaic notions it contained.  

"No," Theo said, answering his own question. "Of course not. Scott probably knows, right? But not the others. At least, Malia, Liam and Mason mustn't. Don't suppose they would have let you go off alone if they understood the danger, or that you didn't think you'd be coming back in time."

"I'll be fine! Now get the fuck out!" Stiles growled, although that was actually _not_ what he wanted at all. His body was suggesting a lot of things it would like Theo to do, and leaving wasn't on the list.  

"No," Theo said casually, holding onto his neutral demeanor although his eyes had dilated and his skin was a little flushed. "You're _not_ going to be fine and you know it, or you wouldn't have run off like this. You're going to get yourself fucking killed or captured, and then where will we all be?"

"Sorry to be so fucking inconvenient," Stiles said in snarky tones, sneaking one hand back behind his knees and down into his lap because _dear_ _God_ he didn't feel like talking right now. He inhaled and squirmed a little, trying to pretend he _wasn't_ jacking off while Theo was staring at him. This whole thing was awkward as hell, but fortunately for him, his inhibitions were quickly plummeting towards nil so he didn't care as much as he would have otherwise.

"Well, it's not your fault," Theo said practically. "I doubt you asked to win this particular genetic lottery, but you know ... being omega _isn't_ a sign of weakness," he added.  

"Huh?" Stiles looked at him like he didn't know what Theo was talking about. He did, but this wasn't a conversation he wanted to be having. Actually, there were _no_ conversations he wanted to be having right now. There needed to be a lot less talking and a lot more touching in the world as far as he was concerned. Theo was just crouching there like a useless, delectable lump, looking good enough to fucking _eat_ and it was driving Stiles crazy.

Theo rolled his eyes. "I may not have been born a shifter, but I'm not ignorant of how things work, Stiles. I know the stigma associated with your biological condition. It's rare and people don't understand it, and people always either vilify or demean what they don't understand. That's why you hide it, right? Which you do _really_ well, by the way," he complimented.

Stiles squirmed, running his thumb around the head of his dick and trembling a little as he fought to keep his knees protectively up between him and Theo, when what he really wanted to do was sprawl them open and invite the other boy over. Theo was right about the stigma and misperceptions. For his part, Stiles knew within himself that his biology did not diminish him in any way, but it certainly could be _damn_ inconvenient.

Theo's gaze had locked onto the faint, glowing lines of the otherwise invisible tattoos on Stiles' arms. He seemed to recognize them for what they were, although he didn't comment on them. "You don't want people to know because you think they'll think you're weak," he continued instead. "That people would never take you seriously as Scott's second if they knew. And, well, I suppose some people probably wouldn't," he agreed. "But fuck them, they're idiots. This is just biology; it's instinct, and there's nothing weak, or wicked about our instincts. Instinct is the purest thing we have.  The instinct to howl, to run, to fuck and be fucked, to eat, to hunt, to kill... it's what makes us what we are, Stiles," he murmured, his voice smooth with an almost liquid passion, his startlingly clear eyes intent and focused as he moved slowly closer and closer, until suddenly he was right there, just a few inches away, close enough to touch.

Stiles wanted to reach out and grab him so bad it hurt. He didn't. Somehow, he didn't. It was a minor miracle. "Yeah, okay, so if you know all that, then you also know that my ... condition ..." he gestured bitterly to himself. "Means anybody who _does the do_ with me is gonna get all instinct-whammied into thinking I’m the best thing since sliced bread and they need to be with me forever or something, and ... uh, vice-versa." He could not in good conscience do that to anyone without warning them, and since he didn't want anyone to know in the first place that put a huge, annoying crimp on his sex life.

Theo laughed. "You think there's _any_ danger of you thinking you want to be with me forever?" he asked, amused.

Stiles squinted at him. "Not a chance in hell."

"Same here," Theo agreed, still grinning. "I'm pretty sure it just makes people want to fuck a lot, Stiles, not necessarily get _married_ , but I'm willing to take my chances if you are."

Stiles blinked at him for a moment, trying to process if Theo was really saying what he thought he was saying or if he was just being a dick and messing with him. Maybe it shouldn't have been as much of a surprise as it was, but Stiles was not used to getting what he wanted, especially when he was in heat.

"Wait... what?" Stiles blinked some more, licking his lips uncertainly and wriggling a little as he clutched at himself, feeling raw and painful and so aroused it was maddening.

Theo grinned, seeming to find his confusion adorable. He very deliberately shrugged out of his jacket and set it aside on the floor. "Let me help you get through this," he offered. "I know this probably isn't ideal, but you're here, I'm here, it just makes sense and it's safer for everybody, right? You'll get it out of your system faster with a partner, and we all get to get out of here safe and sound."

It did make sense; of course it made sense, Stiles knew that. He hesitated not because he didn't want to do it, but because he _did._ Theo was not a good person, he knew it on a level he couldn't define, but that didn't mean he didn't want to shag him. He could tell himself it was the heat talking all he wanted, but if he were honest with himself he'd been aware of Theo for a while now in ways that had nothing to do with his cycle. It was almost too easy to let this happen, to have the excuse of necessity and practicality to assuage the part of himself that didn't trust Theo and knew just how much he _shouldn't_ want to be thinking of him in this way.

"I don’t trust you," Stiles croaked. "I don't _like_ you." He wasn't saying no, but felt he needed to make that clear. He didn't want to be duplicitous or misleading.

"Well, but that's actually what makes this perfect, right?" Theo shrugged, unbuttoning his shirt, because the fucking moron wore a shirt with _buttons_ and who _did_ that anyway?  Stiles watched his fingers dance, feeling unreasonably entranced.

"I mean, you don't _want_ to be with someone you care about, do you? I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but from what I understand, for an omega, you're pretty fucking old to still be alone," Theo said pleasantly, shrugging out of his shirt and _oh my fucking God,_ the man was wearing a sleeveless tee underneath. Just how much fucking clothing was he _wearing_? Who _dressed_ that much? Stiles thought maybe Theo was trying to kill him.

"If you wanted to be with someone you cared about, you already would be. But you don't _want_ to care about anyone like that, do you? You figure everything's too fucked up to get involved with anyone right now. There's already enough people you worry about. You can't open yourself up that way, can't afford all those messy feelings and the weakness and complication they bring. Don't want to risk having anything more to lose, anything more that could be taken away, right?"

Stiles had half a mind to make Theo bleed for slicing into his life like this and pealing it back like an overripe banana peel, but he forgave him a little when Theo pulled his tee off over his head, baring the perfectly muscled torso underneath. The fire coiling in his gut shifted and intensified. He knew he was being ridiculously responsive to the show the other boy was putting on for him, but he really didn't give a fuck. Theo was _ripped_ and he was going to get to touch that and not even have to feel guilty about it later.

"Really, who would?" Theo continued, unbuckling his belt. "But this? There's no expectations here."  He opened his pants, then stopped to take off his shoes and socks, grinning a little when Stiles looked put out. "With us, sex can just be sex." His voice was a warm, humming purr. "It can just be instinct and pleasure and it doesn't have to mean anything. My dick is the only part of me you have to like, right? And you've always said I was a dick."

Stiles laughed breathlessly at that, feeling high and giddy. _Oh God, this was really happening, wasn't it?_ "Okay, okay, but do you have to talk so fucking much?" he grumbled. "Psychoanalyze my sorry excuse for a life later if you please, or better yet, _don't,_ " his eyes flashed a little. "But if you're going to fuck me, then get fucking over here and _fuck me._ "

It felt like such a relief to finally not have to pretend even to himself that he _wasn't_ attracted to the pretty asshole. He knew he shouldn't be. There were _so many_ reasons whyhe shouldn't be. He _knew_ Theo was all kinds of wrong trouble he didn't need, but right now, none of that had to matter.

Theo chuckled, sliding out of his pants and underwear in one smooth motion. "I take it that's a yes?" He crawled over to Stiles and grabbed his leg, jerking the other boy down onto the floor under him and settling over him, naked bodies pressed together. "Because I'd hate to have anybody say later that I took advantage of you."

Stiles gasped, more at the hot, hard sensation of Theo's body than at the abrupt change in position. His nerves sang at the contact, at the amazing, glorious pressure of skin against skin, something he'd never had during heat before, something he'd never realized could feel so _very_ good.

Stiles instinctively curled his legs up around the back of Theo's thighs, arms going around his shoulders as he tried to pull him closer and rub against him all at the same time. "Like ... I'm going to ... fucking tell anybody about this ... ever," he panted, head falling back as Theo pressed firm, urgent kisses along the line of his neck. "You won't either if you know what's good for you," he warned. "But yes, I think _fuck me_ is a pretty damn clear green light," he added with as much sarcasm as he could muster when Theo was biting hickies into the side of his neck and rubbing their dicks together with exquisite slowness.

"Great, because I intend to," Theo murmured back, nibbling at Stiles' ear and then moving up to place short, heated little kisses against his parted lips. "Very ... _very_ ... thoroughly."

"Promises, promises," Stiles moaned, pulling Theo's head down and biting his lower lip, dragging it between his teeth and fucking his tongue into the other boy's mouth.

Theo groaned and kissed him back, their hands catching and skimming across one another's bodies in a wild, heated rush of exploration. One of Theo's hands slid down between their bodies, stroking Stiles' dick and then sliding quickly to his hole, feeling the slickness there and teasing lightly against his rim.

Stiles moaned and bucked against him hungrily, the light touch sending excitement and arousal cascading through him.

"On a scale of one to ten, how much do you want to get my dick in you right now?" Theo teased, torturing Stiles with much too light touches and seeming to enjoy how much the other boy wanted him and how desperate he could make him.

"A billion, okay?" Stiles groaned, needing to be filled so much it ached. "A fucking billion. Just _do it,_ will you? This is not what I call helping."

Theo chuckled. "Foreplay, Stiles, it's a concept. But okay, you wanna fuck, let's fuck."  He pulled back and rolled Stiles over onto his stomach, guiding him onto hands and knees. He ran his hands up and down Stiles' lightly trembling thighs and stroked his wet hole languidly with two fingers, seeming to enjoy the way that made Stiles gasp and squirm. "Fuck, you're sensitive," he said approvingly.

Stiles felt the thick head of Theo's erection brush against his ass and then slot into place between his legs, teasing at his entrance.

"You ready for this?" Theo murmured, pressing forward without waiting for an answer.

Stiles was and he wasn't. On one hand he was absolutely aching to take a dick, but on the other he hadn't actually done so before ... not that he'd ever admit that to Theo in a million years. He'd used plenty of toys of course, but it was different when you were in control of the motion and sensations. He was in control of nothing as Theo thrust into him without further ado, opening him up with his cock and making Stiles take him in one long motion.

"Ahh..." Stiles half gasped, half groaned as Theo's dick filled him, stretching out his sensitive, throbbing body in exactly the way he craved the most. It was intense, almost to the point of pain, but it felt _amazing._ "Fuck," he almost sobbed as Theo bottomed out, rocking his hips to get as deep as was physically possible. It felt _so_ good.

Then Theo started moving, and Stiles had to redefine his concept of pleasure all over again. Theo fucked into him slow the first couple times, still stretching Stiles out and getting used to him, but he quickly started speeding up; firm, demanding thrusts that smacked his hips into Stiles' and left the omega gasping and keening in a most satisfactory manner.

Stiles was beyond sensitive, every nerve in his body keyed to the sensation of what was happening. The friction and glide of Theo's body and the constant, steady hammering against his prostate had Stiles practically seeing stars. He was already desperate to come, but he didn't. He didn't know why. He could jerk off easily enough at other times, but he never could come when he was in heat. He was always just on the edge and that was part of what made it so damn awful. With Theo's weight against his back and his hard body relentlessly plundering him over and over, it was better though. _Much_ better.

Stiles gripped onto the floor, trying to spread his legs wider, trying to take more. Theo seemed to read his body language and gave him more to take. Holding Stiles' hips, he moved faster, fucking him harder and harder until they'd settled into a glorious, almost brutal rhythm and Stiles was desperately biting his lips to keep from screaming, or howling.

It felt like they stayed like that for a small, delirious eternity, bodies jerking and rolling together, Theo fucking and fucking him until the plunge of his cock and the motion of their bodies was all that Stiles knew or understood. Stiles' battered prostate sung, lighting with fire each time Theo jarred into it and making Stiles' insides flip and clench and his cock throb. Theo wasn't even touching his dick, just fucking the daylights out of him, but Stiles didn't care, that was okay, it was all pretty freaking marvelous.

Bent over his back, Theo muffled a soft outcry against Stiles' skin, his hips starting to stutter unevenly. For a moment Stiles felt disappointed because he didn't want Theo to cum, didn't want it to end when he still felt so very, very needy, but then he felt a strange, building pressure as Theo's dick started to swell up inside him and a new wave of exhilaration flowed through him. 

_Holy crap, Theo was knotting him. He was being knotted, right now._

_That_ was a wholly knew experience and Stiles almost didn't know how to handle it. The pressure grew and grew and Theo was still thrusting hard, fucking him ruthlessly for as long as the swelling knot would still fit in and out of his stretched hole.

Stiles resisted the urge to scream as popped in and out, tugging at him mercilessly and making his body alive with pleasure. There was something very primal inside him that was very, _very_ excited about getting knotted. He didn't understand it, but he didn't need to, the pleasure was reason enough. When Theo couldn't physically pull the knot out anymore he pressed in deeper instead, fucking back and forth in short, intense thrusts that ground mercilessly into Stiles and scrubbed the girth of the very substantial knot back and forth inside his quivering, well used passage.

Theo came inside him in hard, unending pulses that Stiles swore he could feel and something inside Stiles seemed to finally release or uncoil, as if having gotten what it wanted or having achieved some kind of goal.

"Come for me," Theo whispered breathlessly in Stiles' ear as he spilled inside him, thrusting his seed deep with needy, urgent jerks. "Come for me, Stiles."

As if having been given permission were all that it needed, Stiles did come. He came _hard._ Pleasure crested through him in spasm after spasm, much more powerful and much, _much_ longer than anything he'd ever experienced before. Orgasm held him in a blissfully unrelenting grip as Theo's knot fucked into him and Stiles' came in one shocking wave of pleasure after another, as if his body were determined to purge itself of all the semen he possessed in one go.

He screamed and Theo clapped his hand over Stiles' mouth, muffling the sound and holding Stiles to him tightly as the omega writhed and shook, cumming until he was dry.

Stiles went slack as the sensation finally faded. Theo collapsed down onto him, rolling them a little onto their side so he could spoon Stiles. Stiles' body throbbed around Theo's knot, pulsing around his hardness in fluttering little waves of post-orgasmic bliss. His thighs felt wet and sticky and he wasn't sure if it was his own slick, or some of Theo's cum leaking free even around his knot. Probably both. He shouldn't get so much satisfaction from the notion of being plugged up with Theo's seed, there was no logical _reason_ for it, but it was what his body was programmed to want and the sensation was somehow deeply satisfying. They were fulfilling the biological imperative that drove his cycles, however little it made sense for a male body with no reproductive system to speak of, and that left him feeling boneless and content. He lay in Theo's arms, feeling hazy and a little awed. _Okay, if **that's** what heat sex was like, then maybe his condition wasn't actually as much of a curse as he'd always thought. _

His heat was far from done with him, though. Despite having literally cum until he couldn't anymore, Stiles was still totally hard and after a few minutes his need started to assert itself again. Night was falling outside and the moon was rising, a bright, white, glowing orb, it's nearness and proximity to the earth tugging at Stiles and feeding the desperate aching inside him. He was stuffed up with Theo's cock and aching from how hard he'd cum, but he already needed _more_.

Stiles started to whine, trying to drive himself back harder onto Theo, needing stimulation, needing _something, anything._

"Aren't you the insatiable one, then?" Theo murmured, sounding amused but not at all displeased. Theo rolled them over so that he was on his back and Stiles was on top, straddling him. He stroked Stiles' cock a couple of times and then folded his hands behind his head, bending his knees and letting his thighs brush Stiles' butt. "Why don't you ride me, Stiles? Ride my knot."

Stiles felt a flush of heat shiver through him. He had never attempted something like this before but with a few hesitant false starts, he did. After the first few rocking rolls of his hips, he began to realize how amazing it felt to grind down onto Theo like this and he started to move with more fervor. His dick was aching as it flopped against his stomach and he clutched at it, but Theo batted his hands way, gripping his hips and giving his ass a few sharp little spanks.

"No touching," he breathed. "Only I get to touch your dick. You focus on my dick. You get your pleasure from that. You want more, ride me harder."

Stiles did, bracing his hands against Theo's chest and riding the other werewolf as hard as he could, moaning and urgently chasing the sensations he craved. Theo seemed to enjoy that quite a bit. Sometimes he squeezed and stroked Stiles' cock. Sometimes he just let it just bounce, watching Stiles wriggle around on his dick with appreciative little gasps of pleasure.

As Stiles' motions grew increasingly needy, Theo started spanking him again, not as a punishment this time, but just because he seemed to like the way it felt and the way it made Stiles clench around his knot each time he slapped him.

Stiles couldn't complain, he liked it too. The fiery slap of Theo's palm against his butt and the way it made him contract almost painfully around the hardness inside him was strangely arousing. Pretty much anything Theo did right now was probably going to be arousing to him, to be honest. Stiles was getting very close now, pleasure creeping up the insides of his thighs and down the curve of his spine, tightening like slipknots in his gut and pooling in his groin.

Just before he could slide over the edge, Theo gripped the base of his dick painfully hard, holding on and not allowing him the release he so urgently needed. Stiles practically wailed in protest but Theo just smiled at him, telling him to work harder for it if he wanted to be allowed to cum.

Stiles rode Theo desperately for what seemed like a really long time, but was probably not actually that long, and Theo finally let him cum. He curled forward against Theo's chest, shaking and jerking and mumbling Theo's name as pleasure took him yet again.

Stiles was boneless again in the wake of his latest orgasm, and Theo's knot had finally gone down enough for him to slide out. Theo lifted Stiles and laid him down on his back. He spread the omega's trembling thighs and slid between them. Holding Stiles' knees, he fucking him again, slow and steady, seeming to enjoy the over stimulated gasping and mewling that the action coaxed from Stiles.

Stiles was beyond oversensitive at this point, his wet, aching insides having already been thoroughly stretched and pounded for over an hour.  Theo's cock pushing in and out of him was almost too much, except for the way that the whole world felt unutterably _right_ each time the other boy was buried balls deep in his throbbing ass. It wasn't even about pleasure at this point, it was about some other, deeper kind of need. He _needed_ to have Theo's dick inside his body. He needed to be close to him. He needed Theo to just hold him down and make him take whatever he wanted to give him. There was something almost alarming in the depth of the need that might have worried Stiles if he hadn't been much too distracted by how _right_ it all felt.

Theo looked down at him with luminous, glowing eyes as he held his legs apart, fucking into him with steady, possessive motions, as if seeking to demonstrate that he owned the body under him. "You like my dick, Stiles?" he demanded, half playful, half growl.

"Y-yeah," Stiles gasped raggedly, thighs quaking as Theo pushed into him relentlessly. "Like it a lot," he admitted, swallowing thickly.

"Good," Theo murmured. "Because I'm going to give it to you until you can't take it anymore. I'm gonna fuck you until you'll never be able to forget that you're mine."

Stiles shuddered, his whole body shivering in eager assent at that plan.  

Theo fucked Stiles like that for a while, driving steadily faster and faster until Stiles was whimpering and crying out over and over, a ragged mess of need and pleasure. Then he pulled out, leaving Stiles gasping and feeling horribly empty.

"Present for me, Stiles," Theo instructed gently, caressing his trembling body. "Hands and knees, head down, ass up. Spread your legs and show me your hole, Stiles," he murmured heatedly. "Show me where you want me."

Stiles was past hesitation by now. For some reason the kind of submission Theo was asking for really turned him on, and he was so damn _empty,_ he needed that fixed, pronto. He rolled somewhat unsteadily onto his stomach and presented for Theo. "Fuck me," he pleaded, like they were the only words he could remember. "Need you."

"Yeah," Theo murmured. "Yeah, you do, don't you?" His fingers skimmed across Stiles' ass, pulling his cheeks open and exposing him intimately. "Look at that swollen little hole. Dripping my cum, red from taking my cock so many times, but still hungry for more. God, you've got to be _so_ raw in there," he murmured appreciatively, like the idea turned him on immensely.

Theo bent his head, tongue skimming across the sensitive flesh.  Stiles started in surprise and made a soft, strangled sound in the back of his throat. Theo liked that and went in for more, rimming Stiles, eating him out until Stiles was practically crying. Then he fucked Stiles again, holding his hips down and just reaming him as hard as he could until he knotted him again.

There was no way Stiles could keep from crying out as he came, and Theo considerately held his mouth again, gagging him and muffling his screams of pleasure.

Whether it was some natural response to Stiles' hormones, or his enhanced chimera biology, Stiles wasn't sure, but Theo seemed to have very little refractory period and amazing stamina, virtues he appreciated quite a bit in his current state. They almost literally fucked all night. Theo knotted him at least four more times. Stiles lost track of how many times he came. His ass was bruised to hell, so sensitive and sore by the end that Theo could barely move inside him without making Stiles want to scream. Stiles felt like he must be so full of the other boy's cum it should be coming out his ears. Theo fucked him until Stiles couldn't take anymore, then held him down and fucked him some more, _making_ him take it, and Stiles loved every raw, intense moment of it. It was the best, most mind blowing heat he'd _ever_ had.


	4. You've been drinking like the world was gonna end (it didn't)

Stiles and Theo made it back to the others an hour or so before moonset. They'd washed up in an old cistern. They looked a rumpled, Theo's t-shirt had been sacrificed to their cleanup efforts and Stiles was limping slightly, but they were otherwise none the worse for wear. Their companions had been seriously worried by their long absence and were distinctly put out, but also very relieved.

Stiles let Theo lie for them, noticing that his heartbeat gave not a blip as he gave a story about a close call with a group of hunters and having to spend hours hiding to avoid discovery. You couldn't tell when Theo was lying. Good to know.

It was already almost time to move out so explanations were thankfully brief and unquestioned.

Stiles was still in heat, it was still simmering under his skin, but all the ... activity ... with Theo had it under control enough for the time being that he could operate around it. He was aware of it like an itch that had been well scratched; it would need more attention later, but for now he could put it aside. His wards are seemed to be working again. They were throbbing again a little from the strain, but he kept his sleeves down and powered through.

Proving that miracles _could_ still happen, for once things went almost shockingly according to plan. There were more than a few tense moments of near discovery and disaster, but they were able to rendezvous with the others and navigate around the defenses laid against them without any major incidents.

The rest of the pack was waiting for them in the agreed upon place. Scott looked rough, but was able to punch through both of the protective rings for them. Luckily, the hunters hadn't found a way to trigger an alarm when the circle was breached... probably because until last week, they hadn't realized it was _possible_ to do so. As long as no one saw the bright blue distortion that flared up around Scott when he pushed through, there would be no way for them to know.

The breach didn't need to be big enough to fit vehicles this time and only had to remain open for the few seconds it took the fugitives to scramble out through the gap, so it was the work of only minutes to get out past both defensive rings. That put the advantage on their side.

The thing about trying to lock down a city as large as Havre was that you couldn't, not completely. It was a _city_ , not a military compound, full of people that needed to go about their daily lives, including those who needed to come and go between it and other nearby towns. There was no physical wall around it, and no matter how numerous the hunter forces and local militias were they couldn't actually patrol every inch of the town's border 24/7.  That, of course, was what the mountain ash and other barriers were for, which worked well enough, until you had the ability to force a path through them.

The city's "peace keeping" force was still on alert after last week's incursion, but since they had good reason to believe that the insurgents who had been in the city were all either dead or escaped already, the watch being kept, while vigilant, was not as intensive as it might have been if they'd had any reason to believe there might be another attempt on the city again so soon after the last.

There was only a brief time for relieved reunions and then they were all on the move again. They were hardly safe yet. More worrisome than getting out of the city itself would be getting all the way back to the Preserve through the large swaths of hunter controlled territory in between.  After last week's adventure, new roadblocks and checkpoints had been put in place everywhere. Fortunately, Scott and the others already had a plan in place to deal with that as well.

Not all humans bought into the current regime's lies or agreed with their increasingly draconian practices. There were some who were supportive and sympathetic towards the shifters' cause, as dangerous as that was for them. The pack had good ties with several such people, including one family that ran a small trucking operation. They had smuggled Scott and the others in, and would smuggle them all out again the same way, hidden in the backs of various trucks, behind their otherwise totally legitimate cargo.

The little band split up, no more than two or three per truck, in order to hide more effectively and, although no one said so, in order to minimize the potential losses if any one of the vehicles were apprehended.

Most of the group were, perhaps, a little surprised when Stiles and Theo voluntarily ended up in the same transport together, but by that point the sun was already beginning to rise and everything was moving very fast, so no one remarked on it.

The truck Stiles and Theo ended up in was transporting large, shrink-wrapped pallets of boxes stacked from wall to wall and nearly from floor to ceiling. Stiles wasn't sure what was in the boxes, but the pallets looked very heavy and probably could not be moved without a forklift. They had been stacked in such a way that they looked as if they completely filled the entirety of the truck's long bay, but in reality there was a narrow, three foot gap between the pallets in the middle of the trailer, just big enough for a couple people to hide. If anyone opened the rear doors, all they would see was a fully loaded truck.

Stiles and Theo used the thick nylon straps which secured the pallets in place to the truck bed as handholds, climbing up over the plastic-wrapped mountains, wriggling through the narrow space left between them and the roof of the truck, and then dropping down into the little hiding place behind the stacks.

There was probably room to fit at least one more person in here, although it would have become a less comfortable squeeze, but a few moments later the truck door clanged shut without anyone else joining them, plunging the interior of the trailer into darkness.

A six-pack of bottled water and been thoughtfully stowed in the little hiding place. Neither of them had a flashlight, but that wasn't necessary. Morning light was brightening the out of doors, and what little of it came in around the edges of the somewhat beat-up old truck's rear door was enough for them. They both had excellent night vision.

The truck got underway with a rumble, and Stiles leaned his back against one of the pallets, sitting on the floor with his knees folded up in the narrow space. He wasn't sure why he'd stuck with Theo as they divvied up into the transports. This should have felt pretty awkward, except it didn't, and maybe if he were honest with himself, he knew why he had. He was still pretty firmly in the grip of his heat and although he was able to function around it, he felt a strong compulsion to be near Theo.

"You should probably take your clothes off now," Theo remarked after a minute or two, his hand ghosting down the side of Stiles' neck unexpectedly.

Stiles started and scowled at him, trying to slow his suddenly thundering heart. "Oh, and why is that?" he demanded flatly.

Theo raised his eyebrows meaningfully. "You know why. It's a good six hours back to the Preserve at least and I'm starting to smell you. We need to take care of that, don't you think? Your wards may work on your body." He tapped Stiles' arm lightly and Stiles flinched. "But they're not going to do anything for your clothes I'm guessing, and I don't think you want to arrive smelling like sex?"

"Oh. Huh. Yeah, point," Stiles said, swallowing a little. Actually, he _could_ scent-proof his clothing if he needed to, but he took Theo's meaning and his gut stirred pleasurably. He'd been hard all morning and now that they were no longer on the move the heat under his skin was trying to reassert itself, an itch needing to be scratched again. He hesitated a moment, regarding Theo. He _could_ tell him to fuck off and try to muscle through alone. It wasn't so bad now, not like it had been.

... but why put himself through that? What was the point, after what they'd already done last night? _In for a penny, in for pound._

Stiles took his clothes off, piling them in the corner with the water bottles. Theo followed suit, then pulled Stiles to him. Pushing Stiles' back up against the palettes behind them, Theo slid between his legs in the narrow space, settling Stiles partially on his lap.  It was a tight fit and there wasn't much room, their bodies rubbing and dragging together hungrily in a tangle of limbs and tongues and exploratory touches.

Stiles thought he could really get used to this as Theo's hands ran up and down his sides, their dicks chafing together as their motions ground his back against the hard, bumpy palettes behind him. His damp skin stuck and clung to the thick plastic wrapping, making small sucking sounds as they moved and squirmed about, seeking greater friction and pleasure from one another.

The enclosed space was warm and a little stuffy, Stiles' rich, hormone laden scent quickly filling the small enclosure like a drugged perfume that made them both feel high. Dimly, Stiles knew he was going to have to do something about this or the whole truck was going to reek like them when it was opened up, but he'd deal with that later, _later_... right now, he only wanted to think about the way Theo was pinching and teasing his nipples with one hand, while reaching down and rubbing at his already wet hole with the other.

Stiles hummed in his throat as Theo's fingers slipped easily into him, tugging and stroking at his sensitive rim. Theo did that for a little while, kissing and rocking into him while he fingered him open. He seemed to really enjoy watching the way Stiles responded to that kind of stimulation, perhaps still somewhat enamored of Stiles' slightly unusual biology and the uniquely over-sensitive erogenous zones it gave him.

"They say omegas really enjoy having cum inside them when they're in heat. Is that true?" Theo asked as he kissed along Stiles' neck, still playing with his hole. Theo was sporting a soft hint of stubble and it scratched lightly against Stiles' skin as he caressed him. He sounded genuinely curious and interested, as if wanting to compare rumor to reality and find out how best to take care of Stiles.

Just at the moment, Stiles couldn't think of a reason not to be honest. "Yeah," he acknowledged, running his hands through Theo's hair and scratching blunt nails passionately down his back. He rolled his hips about hungrily. There wasn't a lot of room to maneuver here, and he really wanted more friction. "Feels really good. Dunno why, part of the whole instinct thing I guess. It's like _breed, breed, breed!_ My body doesn't seem to realize I can't have babies." He chuckled conspiratorially, feeling totally high. "Shh, we won't tell it."

Theo grinned at him playfully. Even in the dimness, Stiles could see that the other boy's pupils were totally blown. He was probably feeling as wasted as Stiles. Maybe even more so. Stiles wasn't sure how his pheromones affected others, he'd always been too afraid to find out. Fortunately, he didn't particularly care if they jacked Theo up. Especially as long as he kept _touching_ him like that.

"You want me to breed you?" Theo murmured, seeming to warm to the idea. His fingers dug deep into Stiles, sending pleasure shooting down his thighs. "Breed you like my little bitch?" he murmured.

That should _not_ have been as hot as it was and in the light of another day perhaps it would have seemed silly or even offensive. Not right now though, not at all. Stiles totally blamed the way he shuddered in response on the whole heat thing.

"Yeah," he murmured breathlessly. "Yeah."  Hey, role play was a thing, right? It didn't really mean anything.

They wriggled around until they were able to lay down lengthwise, Theo hiking Stiles' knees up onto his shoulders as he leaned over and pushed into him.

Stiles made a soft little sound of approval, the agitated jangling of his nerves calming into sweet, hums of pleasure as Theo filled him again. He'd already healed from their rigorous activities last night, but his body was still heat-sensitive and needy. He should have been more tired he supposed. He should have been exhausted after all the activity and not sleeping for almost 24 hours, but he was too keyed up, too pumped to feel his own weariness and it simply translated into an added layer to the delirious quality of his pleasure. He was never going to be able to think about his cycle the same way again. Not now that he knew it could feel like _this._

"Have to get you a plug later," Theo murmured, sucking Stiles' nipples until they were deliciously puffy and sore as he fucked him almost gently. "So you can keep my cum in you all the time."

Stiles moaned and pulled his head up for a kiss. He liked the idea, he really, _really,_ lied it, but a soft warning chimed in the back of his mind. He blinked, stroking Theo's face and struggling to focus, to think somewhat clearly past the haze of hormones and delightful sexy-time endorphins. "You're assuming there will be a _later,_ Theo," he warned. "We agreed this was just about the sex."

"Of course," Theo agreed easily. "But these heats... you have them regularly, don't you? If you _want_ to spend them alone, that's fine, but, you know, if you _don’t_..." Theo's smile curved a little wickedly as he nailed Stiles' prostate with particular force. "Well, this has been pretty awesome, so consider me happy to serve. Just letting you know I'm available, that's all. Always your choice, Stiles," he promised, as if he seemed to know that Stiles' mind needed that elusory sensation of control and independence, even as his body craved nothing but submission. Theo appeared to grasp the fragile, sometimes uneasy balance between Stiles' personality and his instincts almost alarmingly well.

"Mm, we'll see," Stiles said vaguely, although he knew deep down that there was no way he was going to be able to bring himself to struggle through the long, frustrating misery of a solo heat again when this tempting, no-strings attached alternative was right there within reach.

Theo fucked him slow and gentle until Stiles couldn't stand it anymore. He squirmed and begged for more, but Theo hushed him and if possible slowed down even more. It was lovely and absolutely maddening and Stiles struggled with conflicting desires to kiss Theo and punch him.

He started bucking and tugging at Theo, scratching and pulling at him with increasing vigor. Theo laughed and pulled out of him, holding his legs up and giving his ass several firm, punishing slaps.

Stiles groaned a protest, at the loss of Theo's dick rather than the spanking. "Theo...!"

"You're so damn bossy, Stiles," Theo said with tender heat. "Always want everything your own way. A little patience wouldn't hurt you."

"Not my strong suit," Stiles grumped at him, reaching down and messaging his own throbbing, needy hole.

Theo caught his wrists and pulled them up over his head, pinning them to the floor. "So I've noticed." 

There were several thick straps fastened along the edge of the truck bed near Stiles' head, meant to secure items being transported in place. Theo used them to secure something else. Smirking, he wrapped them around Stiles' wrists, binding his hands up in the thick, sturdy nylon until it was impossible for him to get free. 

"Now that's better. That should keep you from moving around too much." Grabbing the dangling ends of the some of the long straps that secured the heavy, solid pallets on either side of them, Theo wound them about above Stiles' knees and cinched them down tight using them to hold the other boy's legs up and out, leaving Stiles spread quite helplessly before him. It was a somewhat awkward set-up, but sufficient.

The tension of the bindings and the position they held him in kind of hurt, but the helplessness _did_ things to Stiles and he felt his own slick trickling down his thigh, his body humming with even more arousal.

"There," Theo said approvingly, patting Stiles' thigh. "That should hold you still so you can take it like a good little bitch."

The truck bumped and vibrated under Stiles' back, adding to the overall sensations as Theo settled back over him. Stiles couldn't move now, confined by the tight space, Theo's body and the bindings. He could do nothing but lay there and take it as Theo fucked him maddeningly, horrendously slowly, drawing out the pleasure for what felt like forever.

Eventually Stiles gave himself over to it, floating in the sea of sensation Theo built around him and finding that weird, blissful place where everything faded away and nothing mattered but the sensation of Theo's body and the pleasure tingling through his body.

Stiles didn’t know how long it lasted, but the sensation when Theo finally knotted him was exquisite and he shivered, gasping and cumming all over his own stomach.

Theo must be a little tired at least, because he dozed some after that, resting on Stiles' chest while his knot went down. Stiles drifted a little too, but he was still too keyed up to truly sleep, his body still hard and wanting more.

Theo roused eventually and pulled free, leaving Stiles bound as he retreated to the other side of the small space to drink one of the water bottles. He opened another for Stiles and held it for him, carefully feeding it to him without untying him.

Stiles drank as much as he wanted, then Theo played with the rest, dribbling it across Stiles' nipples, down his stomach and across his hard, flushed cock. Stiles squirmed, not sure if he liked or disliked the cool, dribbling sensation on his heated flesh.

Theo moved the water bottle lower, letting the water trickle down across Stiles' messy, leaking hole. Stiles legs were still held wide open by the straps, his knees trapped against the pallets on either side of him and his body on display. The cool water felt extremely odd against his slightly aching, intimate areas and he squirmed a bit more in his bonds, once again uncertain whether the sensation was pleasurable or not. 

Theo emptied the remainder of the bottle there slowly, letting it dribble down like some kind of ancient water torture and watching Stiles with intent, interested eyes. It was as if he were playing, experimenting with the newfound freedom he had to toy with and explore Stiles' body and his reactions. He rubbed the empty bottle against the inside of Stiles' thighs before setting it aside.

Retreating again, Theo leaned against the opposite wall of the truck, just... watching Stiles. Just watching him lay there, spread open, dripping water, slick and cum and unable to move.

Stiles felt his skin heat, a hard flush creeping up his cheeks and neck at the way he was being observed. His dick twitched, curled hard against his stomach. Even Theo's gaze did things to him, it seemed. "Okay, so... you just gonna look or what?" Stiles finally rasped, his body pulsing with the need to be touched.

"Yes," Theo said contentedly. "For a little while."

"Oh God, seriously?" Stiles protested, squirming in his bonds and finding them unfortunately secure. If he truly applied himself, he probably could have broken free, but somehow ... somehow he didn't want to do that. As much as he hated the lack of contact, there was something about the game they were playing that he liked, that he wanted to play.

"It's for your own good," Theo taunted lightly. "Need to work on that patience of yours."

"Fuck you," Stiles grumbled, banging his head back against the floor and glaring up at the ceiling. The vibrations of the road and the spinning wheels continued to hum through him, only increasing his desire for something more. He was a sweaty, sticky wreck and he could feel water and cum drying on his skin.

To Stiles' utter annoyance, Theo took another little nap. By the time he woke up, Stiles was almost ready to scream from having been left with no way to get relief or even move for so long. His chest was heaving, his skin flushed and prickly and his slick felt like it was practically forming a puddle beneath him, although it probably wasn't.  

Theo regarded his state with deep appreciation and Stiles favored him with a few choice imprecations about his sleeping habits.

"Hey, cut me some slack," Theo teased. "You're a lot to keep up with. I do need _some_ rest."

Stiles cursed at him some more until Theo asked if he wanted to spend the rest of the trip like that. Stiles stuck his tongue out at him, but fell silent. He chewed his lower lip. "Theo," he mumbled, trying not to sound whiny. "Please... for real... I need... I can't..."

Theo bent to him and caressed his flushed cheek. "Okay, babe. I get it. Shh, it's okay."

Stiles wasn't sure how he felt about pet names, but that wasn't his biggest concern right now. He leaned his head into Theo's hand, even that small touch doing a little to still the raging, anxious burning under his skin.  Stiles sucked Theo's thumb into his mouth, licking and biting at it lightly.

Theo hummed approvingly and fed more of his digit between Stiles' lips for him to play with. "I want you to suck me," he said after a minute. "Do you want to do that, Stiles?"

Stiles nodded immediately. He wanted to do anything that involved touching, and the idea of getting up close and personal with Theo's dick at this moment was attractive.

"Okay." Theo unbound Stiles. He yanked the strap in the floor free, tearing the nylon, and used it to bind Stiles' hands behind his back instead. "Like this, okay? Just your mouth," he murmured.

Stiles nodded, struggling somewhat stiffly to his knees. It was awkward in the small space with his hands trapped behind him, but he managed to maneuver between Theo's legs and bent over him. He took Theo in his mouth, somewhat timidly at first, but soon with increasing boldness and confidence. He tasted himself on Theo, but that wasn't as weird as it seemed like it would be. He wouldn't say he liked the taste exactly, but the sensation of Theo's intimate flesh under his tongue and pushing down his throat was exciting. He took him with enthusiasm, if not skill.

Theo had no complaints. He held Stiles by the hair, guiding him and offering suggestions occasionally but mostly enjoying the ride.  Stiles had a little trouble taking him all the way down without gagging at first, but Theo took it slow until soon he was able to bury himself completely, fucking Stiles' throat gently at first and then with steadily increasing force as his need grew.

He came without knotting this time, and Stiles swallowed as much as he could, finding that he wanted it. It thrilled strangely across his senses and he _wanted_ it in a way he couldn't explain. He licked Theo clean afterwards without any prompting, enjoying the scrape of his tongue across the sensitive flesh and the way Theo reacted to it.

Theo rewarded him by returning the favor, sucking Stiles' dick and fingering him until Stiles came, then sliding into his body and fucking him until he came again. He kept going and Stiles climaxed yet again when Theo knotted him.

By then Stiles was finally starting to feel his own exhaustion and as he rested atop Theo's chest, waiting for his knot to go down, both of them ended up drifting off to sleep.

They woke with a start an unknown amount of time later when the truck stopped.

Disorientated, Stiles struggled off of Theo, feeling like a sticky, groggy mess as he tried to understand what was happening. The sound of doors closing and voices outside made them both realize that they had slept through the rest of their journey and they had reached their destination.

Sudden, alarmed panic cleared some of the haze from Stiles' mind and he floundered about somewhat comically as he scrambled for his clothing, shoving at Theo when the other boy got in his way. Theo's hair was mussed and standing up at angles and he looked kind of adorably sleepy and disorientated, not that Stiles wanted to notice that.

"Move, move!" Stiles hissed, finding his throat sore and his voice unusually hoarse. "We're back! Get your damn clothes on!"

Stiffening as he grasped the situation, Theo quickly scrambled for his own clothes. He looked around them with some chagrin, as if only now realizing that they'd made quite a lot more mess than he'd perhaps anticipated.

"Hurry!" Stiles whispered again. "I swear to _God,_ Theo, anyone finds out, you're _dead,_ " he promised.

"Thanks. I could start to feel offended, you know," Theo remarked dryly. Opening one of the remaining water bottles, he quickly washed down his most pertinent and sticky areas before giving it to Stiles to do the same.

Stiles didn't particularly care about Theo's feelings. He was _not_ dealing with the kind of shit he'd get from the others over this turn of events after how vocal he'd been about distrusting Theo. He _certainly_ didn't want anyone thinking they were actually in some kind of _relationship_. Besides, Scott knew about his ... condition, and he didn't want him thinking this was more serious or meant something other than it did. He didn't want Scott to think this meant he thought Theo was okay or safe, because he didn't. Good for a fuck, yes, safe to turn your back on? Jury was still out on that.

Stiles gave himself a quick rinse from the water bottle, getting as much of their combined body fluids off his skin as he could. His wards would help him out with what remained. A _lot_ of work had gone into creating them, and he'd added to and enhanced them significantly over the years. He'd designed them assuming that, should a day ever came when he was actually active with someone, he wouldn't want to broadcast that to the whole world. Shifters were a damn nosey lot for obvious reasons, always up in everyone else's business even if they didn't mean to be. That annoyed Stiles, so he had found a way around it.

Theo splashed the rest of the water around on the floor of the trailer in an attempt to clean up. It would serve well enough for humans, but not for shifter noses of course and he appeared to know that. 

"Aw, shit," Stiles mumbled when he nearly dropped his shirt into the mess, catching it only just in time as he fumbled his clothes with overly lax fingers. Urgency pumped through him as he heard footsteps pass by outside and the familiar ring of Kira's laughter from somewhere nearby. He felt like a kid caught naked on the couch with his boyfriend, who had just heard his parents' car pull into the driveway. Not that he'd ever been that kid, but he bet the feeling was the same.

He tugged his pants on and dug through his pockets, but didn't find what he wanted. "Do you have a pen or something?" he asked Theo urgently.

"What?" Theo was busy wriggling into his own pants and didn't seem to understand the question.

"A pen, a marker, a fucking pencil!" Stiles hissed. "I need something to write with, _now!_ "

His urgency seemed to make an impression on Theo, even if the other boy still didn't understand. Rummaging through his pockets, Theo came up with a small, key-ring sized permanent marker.

Stiles snatched it from him and quickly started scribbling sigils on the pallet next to them. A moment later, Theo grasped what he was doing and gave Stiles an impressed, appreciative look.

"Oh, scent charm, _nice_. Did you do your own, then?" he asked curiously, nodding towards Stiles' arms as he shrugged into his button-down shirt.

"Yes and no," Stiles replied as he finished up his spell work. "I had to have somebody else do the tattooing, but mostly, yes, they're mine." Researching and learning ways to solve problems was rather a specialty of his, always had been, even back before all the madness had started. He'd come up with his methods of masking and coping with his condition a long time ago; they had served him well and he'd continued to build on his knowledge since then.

"Wait," Stiles said, batting Theo's hands away from the buttons of his shirt before he could do it up. He pushed Theo back against the pallets behind him and pulled open his shirt, exposing his chest.

Theo blinked at him, but didn't resist as Stiles pressed the permanent marker to his skin and drew bold, swooping lines across the chimera's chest.

"No good me smelling like a rose if you stink like sex," Stiles muttered, working quickly. He somewhat intentionally dragged the tip of the marker across Theo's nipples, liking the way the other boy shifted and inhaled when he did. He _might_ have added a few more flourishes than was _strictly_ necessary. When it was complete, Stiles pressed his hand against Theo's sternum, in the center of the design. He muttered something under his breath and invoked the ward.

Theo yelped softly and started, back arching in surprise at the sudden flash of painful heat that radiated along the lines.

Stiles smiled cheerfully at him. "Oh, sorry, forgot to mention, that's gonna burn a little."

"Ow..." Theo muttered, bending forward and touching his chest gingerly. He looked up at Stiles with a rueful, pinched expression. "Yeah," he said like it was a massive understatement, voice tense and a little breathless. "You could say that."

Stiles tugged his shirt on over his head and fastened up his jacket. "Don't be a baby, the throbbing will stop in a day or two. Wash the lines off as soon as you can, though. It's going to mask your whole scent, which will seem weird if anyone notices, but we don't have time for anything more delicate. Soon as you break the lines, it'll be gone."

"Good to know."

They both finished dressing rapidly, Stiles just pulling his shoes back on as the back of the truck rolled open and Allison's voice called to them, giving them the all clear to come out.

Stiles was limping again when they crawled out, but considering his otherwise bedraggled state, including his obviously torn and slashed up jacket, no one wondered at that. And if his voice was a little hoarse?  Well, they would probably put that down to the long ordeal they'd just been through as well. That would certainly seem more logical than supposing he'd been vigorously deep-throating Theo fucking Raken in the back of a cargo truck.  

Stiles was finding that although they were probably still healing much faster than human, the intimate aches he gained during his encounters with Theo were taking longer to fade than was otherwise normal for him. It was almost like taking a wound from an alpha, except Theo wasn't an alpha. Stiles wasn't sure the why of it, but it wasn't a huge problem. Actually... truth be told, he kind of liked the lingering ache.

Some of the others had already arrived and others were unloading now, crawling and wriggling free from their hiding places. There was some cheering and a necessary, enthusiastic round of hugs celebrating their successful escape and safe return. Stiles noticed Theo was a trifle more reserved than usual, but he knew the strength of his own spell work and he wasn't worried. He hugged his friends with genuine happiness and relief, honestly feeling truly optimistic for the first time in a long while. He felt very contented and relaxed, despite everything they'd been through, his usual constant low-level anxiety pleasantly absent. It was probably just all the feel-good sex endorphins, but he'd take it.

It was _so_ good to see everyone safe and sound. He honestly hadn't thought he was going to get to have this again for a while. He'd had to come to terms with the idea of possibly dying in Havre, or worse, and cheating that fate somehow made him feel very alive and thankful for everything that he had, such as it was. Looking around at the tired, dirty, smiling faces of his friends, he thought that really, he had quite a lot.

Malia hugged him, then punched him none too lightly in the chest. " _That's_ for scaring me last night," she told him, serious but not unhappy. "Don't do it again." 

Stiles laughed and rubbed his chest ruefully. "Ow! Okay! You got it!"

After such a long ride in hot, cramped circumstances, everyone was a little ripe and they all adjourned quickly for showers and shut-eye once the last of them had finally arrived and they had finished giving their sincere thanks to the drivers who had put themselves on the line for them. People like that were the kind that gave Stiles hope that there could be a future beyond the present troubles, whether or not it was one where he himself belonged. 

Stiles slept most of the rest of the day. Later that night there was a little party of sorts. Really it was just the pack getting together and splurging on favorite comfort foods that were difficult to obtain in these parts these days, but there was beer (the kind that actually worked) and pizza and laughter and it seemed a pretty good celebration to Stiles.

He was relieved that Theo kept a friendly but respectful distance, chatting and laughing with some of the others and not crowding him or paying him much attention at all. Stiles was still going through his cycle and the heat wasn't gone, but it was under control again. He was aware of it, but after so many years of struggling through much worse, his current pangs were easily ignored. Ordinarily there was no way he could have taken part in something like this when he was mid-cycle, so he was content to call his possibly dubious brand of sex-therapy a win.

Everyone was happy to have the pack back together safely, and that wasn't the only thing they had to celebrate. Stiles was surprised but pleased to find Cora taking part in the get-together. Her arms were wrapped in bandages and there were dark circles under her eyes, but her eyes themselves looked a little less dark and haunted from the last time he'd seen her. She made a point of thanking Stiles, Malia, Liam, Mason and Theo each individually for what they in particular had risked to get her and the others out of Havre.

Stiles wasn't sure how to respond and shrugged it off with a smile and joke as usual, but it was nice to see some good come of their efforts. It was nice to feel like all the sacrifice was worth it.

The real surprise though, was finding out that Cora was actually Cora _Hale,_ as in Derek Hale's little sister. As in the Hales that everyone had thought were dead since Immolation Tuesday, except they _weren't_ because they'd actually been taken and kept prisoner this whole time.

Stiles had been right about the older woman he'd carried out of Havre being Cora's mother. He just hadn't imagined that she was also Derek's mother, or that she was _the_ Talia Hale. She was still in critical condition, recovering from her injuries, but Dr. Deaton gave her a very hopeful prognosis and thought she would pull through. Derek's sister Laura and his uncle Peter had also been among those spirited away in some of the other transports, he was told. It was all good news, not only on a personal level, but for the resistance as well. Recovering the Hales, especially Talia, was going to mean something to a lot of people. Once word got out, what had happened to the Hales would be a galvanizing force in the resistance's favor. It could also provide a much needed push towards unity among the packs who had thus far been reluctant to rally behind a young upstart like Scott.

Stiles wasn't sure how that would play out, exactly. Would Talia want to take back over once she recovered, or would she want to work with Scott on what he had gotten going? If she was as smart as everybody seemed to think she was, Stiles thought she'd see the wisdom in working with Scott and his pack, but he knew that Scott himself didn’t care. He'd be perfectly happy to step aside and let Talia lead if it seemed the best thing to do. They would just have to wait and see what the future held, but however it played out, it looked like this was going to be a pretty large turning point for the resistance.

Later on in the evening, as Derek stood off to one side with Cora, his arm around her shoulders like he just needed to touch her to know she was real, Stiles thought that miracles really never would cease, because who knew that Derek Hale could actually look _happy_? It was a nice change and it made Stiles happy too.

After a few beers, Scott felt the need to apologize to Stiles several times for having left them behind in Havre, even though no part of that had actually been his fault.

"Scott, it's _fine,_ we're all okay and everything worked out," Stiles repeated, a little amused by his best friend's tipsy over-earnestness. "Despite what you may think, you're not _actually_ responsible for _everything,_ Scotty. We _can_ actually take care of ourselves on occasion, you should trust us a little more," he teased.

"I do," Scott said seriously, fixing Stiles with that open, deeply trusting gaze of his. He hugged Stiles and Stiles hugged him back automatically, but guilt swept through him in a cold wave, draining some of the buoyancy from his mood. 

Over Scott's shoulder, Stiles saw Theo across the room, watching him. A sudden surge of unreasoning annoyance flashed him like a spike of heat and he found himself wanting to smash Theo's face in ... or strip him naked. Or both. Both would be good.

Stiles cleared his throat and pulled away from Scott. "So... Scotty, this is awesome, and I'm glad to be back, but I think I need a little break for a couple days, yeah? Past couple weeks have been a lot, you know," he remarked casually.

Despite his buzz, Scott read between the lines as Stiles had known he would and immediately nodded his agreement. "Of course, take as much time as you need. Everything okay? Anything I can do?"

"Yup and nope," Stiles assured with a smile. "All good, got it covered."


	5. Secretly you love this, do you even wanna go free?

Stiles did have it covered. There was an old, ramshackle cabin by a lake deep in the woods that he'd discovered some years back. No one seemed to use or care about it anymore so he'd fixed it up and often spent his heats there. He'd never told anyone where he went, not even Scott. He didn't want his friend checking up on him out of well meaning concern and seeing him in mid-heat. Scott respected Stiles' fierce desire to deal with this on his own, in his own way, and had never pressed or pried.

Stiles retreated to his cabin again now, but for the first time, he didn't go there alone. He wasn't sure how he felt about bringing Theo there. He didn't entirely like bringing the chimera into his little haven, but the privacy it afforded them made it ideal, and after a round of skinny dipping in the lake and sex on the sandbar in the middle, he decided that it had in fact been a great idea.

The remainder of Stiles' heat was infinitely more pleasant than usual, although it also lasted a lot longer. It took almost a week for him to get it out of his system. He couldn't be sure whether that was because he'd been off his medication and the lingering effects of the moon's closeness to the earth, or if it had something to do with the fact that he had company. He felt kind of guilty for dropping out for so long, but it was a nice little vacation all things considered.

Stiles wasn't sure how Theo explained his own absences over the course of that week, but apparently the sporadic appearances he put in with the rest of the pack were enough to allay suspicions and he and Stiles basically spent the majority of that week screwing each other's brains out. Theo learned his way around Stiles' body very well. He could be demanding, but he was also very attentive to what Stiles liked and what he needed.

When it was over, things went back to normal, except for the ways that they didn't. Sex with Theo was only supposed to be a heat thing, but somehow it didn't turn out that way. It was just so easy and uncomplicated, even though Stiles knew he couldn't trust the man pounding his ass. Even though he knew the hands caressing his skin were covered in blood. But then... so were his. And when their figuratively bloodstained bodies met and moved together, at least for a while he didn't think about the war, or pain or death or anything else.

Theo was like a drug; pleasant, addictive and probably dangerous. They knew enough of one another's dark secrets that Stiles didn't have to feel like he was living a lie with him, he didn't have to deal with that guilt and self-recrimination. Perhaps most important of all, Stiles didn't feel like he could ruin Theo. He didn't have to worry about somehow corrupting him, because Theo was already there on his own.

Stiles never told anyone about the two chimeras, and Theo never told anyone about the men in the tunnel, or any of the others. Stiles convinced himself that it didn't make a difference, with things as they were. Not yet. Someday it would, but not yet.

They continued to keep their interactions on the down low; another lie to join the growing pile that Stiles had collected around himself. It was probably wrong, but Stiles was used to wrong. There was very little right about he and Theo, except for how right it _felt_ when Theo was touching him.

Despite Stiles' determination to keep their affairs private, it was inevitable that their interactions soon started spilling out of the confines of the cabin by the lake, or even the privacy of their own bedrooms. Stiles and Theo were both adrenaline junkies with an unhealthy attraction to danger, and that showed in their sex life.

The first time they had sex in the store room behind the aide center Stiles' heart had been going a mile a minute the whole time, the risky location and danger of discovery heightening the thrill and giving him an _almost_ heat-level orgasm. They never would have gotten away with their risky behavior, but Stiles' ability to ward their scents away at will enabled them. 

Over time, they found more ways to play and to chase that addictive thrill. They discovered shiabari, and Theo would tie intricate patterns of knots around Stiles' body in places where he could wear them under his clothes without anyone noticing. The pressure of the ropes and knots against his skin was like Theo's hands on him all day, especially when Theo would cast him the kind of surreptitious, knowing look that set his body on fire.

Theo eventually procured a butt plug as he'd said he would, and Stiles would wear that under his clothes sometimes too, the constant stimulation leaving him keyed up and hungry. Sometimes Theo would yank the plug out and fuck him over the nearest hard surface, quick and dirty, then push it back in as soon as he was done. Sometimes he did that a couple times in the same day, leaving Stiles feeling like he was overflowing in a way that thrilled and embarrassed him in equal measure.

It wasn't as if having sex was _all_ Stiles did with his time. He was plenty busy with all the rest of their work, like everyone else in the pack ... but it was increasingly becoming the part of his life he enjoyed the most. That was problematic in so many ways, but, considering the very real possibility they all faced of dying at any time, and his own pessimistic view of what the future held for him personally even if he survived, Stiles reasoned that as long as no one else was getting hurt, it wasn't _so_ wrong to take what he could enjoyment out of life, in whatever way it presented itself. 

Ironically, he and Theo worked much better together now in the field. They ran several highly dangerous missions together and gained a bit of a reputation as being quite the force to be reckoned with. They were both clever and capable of being relentless once committed, although Stiles had his lines and he stuck to them doggedly. He never intentionally shed blood unless there was absolutely no other choice possible. Theo was a little too free with death for Stiles' tastes and Stiles tried to keep him in check. For the most part, he succeeded, at least as far as he was aware.

Sometimes, Stiles saw a strange, almost puzzled hint of frustration in Theo's eyes, like the Chimera wasn't entirely sure _why_ he was letting Stiles talk him into this risky and entirely harebrained scheme when slitting a few throats would have achieved their ends much more easily.

To be honest, Stiles rather enjoyed frustrating Theo. He liked teasing and taunting him and making him crazy. Theo was such a smug bastard, breaking his composure was always a goal worth achieving. He could be such a petulant little child when you really set him off, it was amusing.

Theo called him on it one night when they were alone in the big old farm kitchen that acted as the resistance HQ meeting room. Stiles was nearing his cycle again, the growing agitation making him both extra horny and extra annoying, at least to hear Theo tell it.

"You're trying to make me mad," Theo accused, pushing Stiles up against the wall and glowering at him.

"Well it's almost not fun when you make it so easy," Stiles retorted, pushing Theo back away from him. "Dude, what is your problem? You've been moody as fuck ever since we got back from Brackton."

"Haven't you got that backwards? I'm not the one about to cycle," Theo said uncharitably.

Stiles' face went blank, his shoulders tensing. Teasing was one thing, but he wasn't going to take that particular attitude. "Okay. I'm gonna go," he said in clipped tones, brushing past Theo and walking away.

"Stiles, wait..." Theo caught his arm, but it was the apologetic tone in his voice that made Stiles stop and turn back. Theo ran a hand through his hair. "I'm sorry. You're right, I've been distracted."

Stiles folded his arms, regarding Theo. "It's that chimera we ran into, isn't it? You're worried they saw you. You're afraid of something," he surmised astutely. "The Argents or ... those freaky ass Doctors?" he hazarded.

Theo gave him a slightly mirthless smile. "Always figuring things out, aren't you? Yeah," he admitted. "Yeah, I am worried that she saw me. I don't care about the Argents, but if the Doctors find out I'm still alive, they'll come after me. I'm their property, you see, or so they feel. The longer they think I'm dead, the better."

"Well, there's a good chance she _didn't_ see you," Stiles pointed out practically. "And if they come after you, well, you know, then they'll just have to be dealt with."

"That's easier said than done, Stiles," Theo countered.

"Always is." Stiles grinned and cocked his head. "And yet somehow, we manage. Different day, same story. We'd just have to figure something out and come up with a plan." That was basically their entire lives, Stiles thought.

"Plans, yeah," Theo murmured thoughtfully, reaching out and touching the back of Stiles' cheek lightly. "Plans are good, but sometimes they get ... complicated."  There was something unreadable in his eyes and Stiles wasn't sure what was going through his head.

"They do," he agreed with a twinge of inner chagrin. His entire non-relationship with Theo that was somehow trespassing dangerously near actually being a relationship was proof of that.

"You know... there's a time when you would have been happy to let them have me, not tried to help me," Theo pointed out. His smirk was back, his more normal demeanor returning.

Stiles rolled his eyes. "Don't get any ideas. It would be bad for the pack if they showed up. Besides, they're creepy evil dudes and you're kind of handy to have around, so... yeah, totally self interest here."

Theo grinned and moved into him, making Stiles take a step back, the back of his legs bumping into the table. "Oh, good. I was starting to think you might be forgetting our agreement," he teased. His hands fell to Stiles' hips as he rocked against him and leaned in for a light kiss.

"Nooope," Stiles replied, kissing him back. "All the sex, none of the strings, and I still don't like you," he promised with mock solemnity ... although he wasn't _entirely_ sure how true that was anymore.

"I don't like you either," Theo agreed, voice a little breathless as he slid his hands under Stiles' shirt and dragged them up his back.

"Great!" Stiles said cheerfully. "Then all is right with the world. Now let's get out of here so we can fuck."

"Why bother?" Theo asked suggestively, flicking open Stiles' fly and reaching into his pants.

Stiles groaned, looking around anxiously at their surroundings. "Oh, this is such a very bad idea," he muttered, rutting into Theo's hand.

"Which is exactly why you like it," Theo retorted, shoving Stiles' pants down to his knees and unbuttoning his own fly. He spun Stiles around and bent him over the table, taking him right there.

Stiles panted softly, griping on to the edge as he was rocked back and forth, until Theo yanked his arm behind him and ground his wrist into the small of his back, using it to pin him in place as he fucked Stiles zealously into the table.

++++++

The next day, Stiles found himself in that same room again for a meeting. He sat at the table and tried very hard not to think about what else had happened there. This effort was not helped by the thick plug currently in his ass that was making him want to grind against the chair. His heat was definitely coming on again, sooner rather than later by the feel of it. It was weird that he actually looked forward to it now rather than dreading it.

Once the meeting really got underway, it reclaimed his wandering attention because most of it was pretty important. A lot had happened in the handful of months since the raid on Havre, and for once some of it had been good.

The rescue of the Hales had done all that they might have hoped it would in terms of giving the were community at large something to rally around, but it had done even more than that. Talia Hale had recovered and was proving a very useful ally. Her injuries had left permanent marks on her. No handicap could restrain her force of will, but she had chosen to use her condition as a reason to position herself as more of an ambassador than a general, using her influence where it was best applied and encouraging Scott to keep doing what he did best. 

The Hales had had a lot of allies in the rest of the world at one time, and Talia had a skill for calling in favors and knowing who to ask. These connections got their cause some much needed international and media attention. The firsthand testimony of Talia and some of the others about the horror of what the Argents were up to, along with Allison's testimony as someone who had been on the other side, and a video that Lydia had shot inside the research compound during the jailbreak had made it onto international news and now the world at large was finally starting to take notice of what was happening here and understand the seriousness of it.

Just recently, their little resistance had started receiving gestures of support and solidarity from one of the larger countries to the north that had previously been remaining neutral in what most considered to be an episode of "internal unrest" in their country, rather than, well, _genocide._

This turn of events forced the Argents to start being more cautious and circumspect in their actions. The revelation of what had been happening in Havre, apparently without his knowledge, had also brought about Chris Argent's defection, something that Stiles knew was a great relief to Allison and possibly a large boon to them.

So far, most of the gestures of support from outside had been by way of humanitarian aid, which was welcome, but it wasn’t going to be enough and they all knew it. The world was starting to pay attention, but they still needed to prove that their cause was just enough to warrant any stronger actions from abroad.

The Argents were happy to enter a PR war, pushing back with a string of atrocities committed by the weres, most imagined, but some real. No parties were wholly blameless.

At the meeting today, Stiles learned that there were a delegation of investigators from the union of nations who would be coming, tasked with trying to determine the true state of affairs and separate fact from fiction when it came to the things that both sides were claiming.

This was an important first step for any future outside actions that might be taken, and Talia, several places down on Stiles' right, was stressing to all of them just how vital it was to respond carefully and without anger to some of the more sensitive and inflammatory charges that the hunter faction had laid at their feet. "We need to make sure we tell nothing but the truth," she cautioned.

"Shouldn't be a problem, most of their allegations are pure bullshit," Derek stated his opinion, not mincing words. 

"The facts are on our side," Scott agreed. "They have to see that."

"I think there is reason to be hopeful, yes," Talia agreed. "But _most_ is not _all._ All I'm saying is that we need to be careful and honest and accept blame where blame is due.We can explain, we can make our case, but we don't want to seem like we're trying to hide or cover anything up. The truth _is_ on our side, but appearance is important too," she pointed out.

"Of course we'll want them to see they can trust us," Scott agreed. "We don't have anything to hide."

Stiles studied the table. Discussion flowed around him and he followed the threads only dimly, his thoughts tangling into a conflicted gnarl. The gist that he gathered from what he heard was that while there was still a long way to go, if things went well with the investigative delegation, then there was hope that they could eventually begin to see some return of stability, perhaps a chance to begin rebuilding rather than just running, fighting, hiding and trying to survive. It was a lot of ifs, but hope had been in short supply for a long time, so it was something.

Someone used the phrase "get back to normal" and Isaac returned with a slightly sarcastic "Yeah, and how long do you think _that_ will take?"

"It could be a very long time," Talia cautioned.

"I don't think we _can_ try to go back and re-make things the way they were," Scott said quietly. "Too much has been broken and shattered for that. I think we probably have to try to go forward and make something new instead."

Stiles was feeling a little melancholy after the meeting and he slipped off by himself. Scott found him a little while later, sitting by an open field, watching a bunch of little kids play with balls and sticks.

"We used to play down here, didn't we?" Scott asked, dropping to sit beside his friend.

Stiles just nodded.

"Hey, is everything okay?" Scott prodded with concern. "You seemed kind of off after the meeting. Is it... you know, do you need some time?" he asked delicately.

"Yeah, actually, but that's not..." Stiles chewed his lip and sighed, scuffing his heels in the dirt. He sighed. "It's nothing. That was really good news today, I mean, it's good that things are finally looking up, right? I just ... what you said in there is true, I guess. We can't go back, any of us. Everything is different, nothing will be like it was, and I guess I just wonder when the dust settles ... what comes after that? You know?"

" _Life_ is what comes after that," Scott said with a smile.  "Can you imagine just being able to do normal stuff again? New doesn't mean bad. There's so much rebuilding to do. I know it won't happen all at once, there's a lot of work ahead and it will probably be harder than I think, because it always seems to be, but hey, there's nothing we can't do together, right?" he teased wryly.

"Oh, so you're volunteering me for more of your grand cause shit, are you? Great," Stiles retorted, but it was half-hearted at best. He was trying to feel some of Scott's enthusiasm, but he was thinking about those investigators and the kind of questions they might ask be asking. Talia was right of course, they couldn't hide things. Responsibility would need to be taken. Which meant it was possible that at some point his own actions during the war would come out or come into question. He hadn't done anything unjustified by circumstances, nothing he thought the investigators would have a problem with in the grand scope of things ... but it's not the investigators he was worried about.

"Well you don't _have_ to," Scott responded, trying to be playful, but with a pinch of concern around his eyes that said he could read Stiles' mood, even if he didn't understand it's cause. "Guess it's just hard to imagine a future that doesn't involve us doing something crazy and probably ill advised together." He was clearly trying to coax a smile out of Stiles.

Stiles wanted to give him one, he really did, but he couldn't manage it. His heart was too heavy. "Are you sure about that? You really think you'll still want me around when all this is over?" he whispered, the words slipping free before he could think better of them. Stiles immediately bit his lips and looked down at his hands, cursing his tendency to blurt his thoughts. Maybe his impending heat _was_ making him a little extra moody and stupid, or maybe he was just so tired of it all it was hard to keep it bottled up anymore.

Scott looked at him with surprise and complete confusion. "Of course, why _wouldn't_ I?"

Stiles was silent a long moment, then finally lifted his head and met Scott's gaze. He couldn't do it. He couldn't lie anymore. Waiting for the axe to fall was killing him. Maybe it was better to let it all shatter now before he let himself start entertaining any kind of hope that would only make the eventual crash harder.

"Because you may not like the person I am anymore, Scotty," he said quietly. "Maybe we've all been a little too busy not dying for you to notice, but I'm not who I was when we were sixteen anymore. You remember Ms. Morrell, and how she was always quoting Churchill at us, way back when? I found one of my old notebooks the other day, and there was this quote, it was something like _those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war_."  Stiles swallowed. "I think that's probably true. There's blood on my hands and I don't regret it, but I don't expect it will ever come off either. You don't know the things I've done, Scotty."

To Stiles' complete surprise, Scott responded to his confession by turning and hugging him.

"None of us are who we were when we were sixteen," Scott told him, holding onto his shirt and tucking his chin against Stiles' shoulder, like he didn't want to let him go. "God knows I'm not. I don't care what you've done Stiles," he promised. "You told me once that I was your brother, well, you're mine. Nothing will change that. Whatever you've done, you thought it was right or you did because you had no choice. I am as certain of that as I am of anything, and that's all I need to know. Unless, there's something you _want_ to tell me," he added.

"No, I - I'm good," Stiles said, choking a little on the unexpected tears streaking down his face. He laughed, pulling back and scrubbing at his eyes. "Oh my God, stupid hormones, right?" he snuffled.

Scott didn't look like he bought that excuse for a minute, but just fist bumped Stiles' shoulder. "Dude, take care of yourself, okay? After all, you have to stay strong so I can volunteer you for all my grand cause shit," he grinned. "Everything's gonna work out, Stiles, it will."

For once, Stiles actually started to think it might.

After Scott left, Stiles felt his skin growing steadily hotter and hotter until he finally pried himself up and headed off for the cabin. He didn't need to tell Theo. Theo always seemed to know and would show up on his own.

That night, beside the lake, between bouts of toe-curling sex, Stiles thought a lot about the future, something he hadn't let himself do in a while. He wondered, as he lay on the grass with Theo spooned against his back, what exactly the future held for the two of them, and were the path they were on was headed.

He wasn't _quite_ optimistic enough to think that it would be anywhere good, not in the long term. Theo was Theo. Stiles could never really trust him. The suspicious part of his mind knew it was entirely possible that Theo could have _intentionally_ worked his way into his life and his bed simply because Stiles had been the one potential obstacle in his path to getting the pack to fully trust him. If that was his goal, then it had worked in a way. After all, Stiles was no longer in any hurry to see him leave. Maybe Theo really did always get what he wanted and this was all part of his plan. Stiles didn't believe that was _all_ that they shared, but he also didn't believe that leopards changed their spots.

Theo was with them for now because he chose to be, because it benefited him in some way, but that probably wouldn't always be true. Theo was the kind of person who wanted things, a lot of things. Stiles knew, he saw that in him. Theo wanted to be in charge; he wanted power. He wanted _Scott's_ power, but _that_ wasn't going to happen, because of course, Stiles wouldn't _let_ it happen. If Theo knew what was good for him, he wouldn't try; he would find some other way to get whatever he wanted. Only time would tell.

"Feeling better?" Theo asked playfully, kissing the back of Stiles' neck and rubbing his hand in slow circles against Stiles' sticky stomach.

"Mmm." Stiles arched lazily against him. He had to admit, he would bitterly miss this when it ended and he didn't want to think overmuch about that eventuality. He couldn't ignore it completely, however. He knew how dangerous his own biology could be to him if he didn't remain vigilant. If Theo thought that keeping Stiles fucked out and contented would blind him to whatever it was that Theo was plotting, then the joke was on him, because Stiles was perfectly capable of having his brains screwed out _and_ being suspicious as fuck. What was that they said? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer? 

Stiles leaned back, tipping his head so he could capture Theo's mouth in a slow, languid kiss. Well. He was perfectly happy to keep Theo _very_ close. Yes, he should definitely keep a super close eye on him until things were a lot more settled ... and who knew when that would be?  Stiles smiled contentedly into the kiss. It could take a really, really long time. Who really knew?  It could take forever.

 

_FIN_


	6. Notes

_**Author's Afterwards** _

... and the author reveal has been made!  Forgive me for this useless little notes chapter, I will remove it in a while, but now that the Harvest stories have been taken off anon I just want to thank my lovely beta Inderlander for helping me with this fic, especially with the fight scenes! And my RL friend Suze who enabled me to chain myself to my laptop for like, two days to get the thing finished. Also thank you to the lovely peeps who comment and review! You're all awesome! (´∀｀)♡


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